GTA 5 'kick-ass' story DLC dropped because of GTA Online 'cash cow' says ex-Rockstar developer

A former developer at Rockstar Games said standalone story DLC for GTA 5 was canned because of the success of GTA Online and the company viewing it as a "cash cow".

Joe Robino worked at Rockstar's office in New York as a senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer from 2010 to 2016 - GTA 5 first released in 2013.

Speaking to the SanInPlay YouTube channel, he said he was heavily involved in developing planned story DLC for GTA 5 and GTA Online while some employees were tasked with turning their attention to Red Dead Redemption 2.

He also revealed details as to why he claims the DLC was canned.

"A lot of the team went to do RDR2 right away and I took on this other project that was a standalone DLC for GTA that never came out and it was kick-ass," Robino said.

"I was one of the main editors, camera artists and doing a lot of the second unit on-stage stuff. We split our teams into two - I stayed on GTA Online and this DLC which Steven Ogg (who played Trevor Phillips) was a very important part of.

"A lot of that stuff though did make it, I believe, into later iterations on GTA Online so it's not like they wasted it.

"When GTA Online came out, it was so much of a cash cow, people were living it so much, it was hard to make an argument that a standalone DLC would out-compete that."

Diretor da ROCKSTAR Joe Rubino revela DETALHES INÉDITOS da DLC do TREVOR… (Veja)www.youtube.com

It has not been the first recent mention of dropped DLC for GTA 5.

Earlier in 2024, Ned Luke (Michael De Santa), Shawn Fonteno (Franklin Clinton) and Steven Ogg did a rare appearance together with the service Streamily where they spoke about their starring roles in the game.

And they revealed extra story content had been filmed.

Steven said: "I forget if it was DLC, I had no idea, but Trevor was going to be undercover for the feds and we did shoot some of that stuff with James Bond Trevor.

"He's still kind of a f**k up but he's doing his best to pretend. We shot some stuff and it just disappeared, they never did it and never followed up on it."

Seemingly hinting it was single-player DLC, Ned said: "They went to GTA Online I believe for that stuff."

Rockstar has not commented publicly on this.

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