Grand Theft Auto 5 Story DLC Was Cancelled Because GTA Online "Was Going Crazy"

We’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto 5 for over 10 years now, and one of the reasons is the success of its online component, GTA Online. The success of this mode led Rockstar to change their post-launch content approach for this installment, scrapping plans for planned single-player content. Recently, one of the studio’s former developers spoke about this change, emphasizing that although they originally “spent so much money” on DLC development, the focus changed when GTA Online became a “cash cow” for the company.

During an interview on the SanInPlay YouTube channel, former Rockstar Senior Camera Artist and Virtual Cinematographer Joseph Rubino talked about his work and how the company’s shift in focus ultimately led to the cancellation of the Trevor-focused DLC.

“I was one of the main editors, camera artist and doing a lot of the second unit on-stage stuff,” commented Rubino. “We split our teams into two, so I stayed on GTA Online and then this DLC, which Steven Ogg was a very important part of, and then some of the team overlapped and went to [Red Dead Redemption 2] early on.”

“When GTA Online came out, it was so much of a cash cow and people were loving it so much that it was hard to make an argument that a standalone DLC would out-compete that. Looking back now I would say that you could probably do both, but that was a business decision that they made and I was a little upset about that,” he continued.

“[I was] a little sour at that time, because I was like ‘yo, what the f** guys, this s**t’s awesome, let’s keep going, let’s finish this s**t, and then we shelved it,” concluded Rubino.

Agent Trevor, what the story DLC for GTA V could have been

Earlier this year, Steven Ogg himself, the actor who brought Trevor Phillips to life, commented that he had filmed scenes of his character working as an undercover agent for the FIB, the parody version of the FBI. At the time, Ogg described him as “James Bond Trevor,” where “he’s still kind of a f**k-up, but he’s doing his best, and we shot some stuff and then it just disappeared... and they never followed up on it. This job description sounds like what ended up being the GTA Online update, The Doomsday Heist, where our character works alongside Lester Crest, Agent 14, and other characters and agencies to save San Andreas (and the world) from an AI.