A former Rockstar developer has said the company canceled a standalone Grand Theft Auto 5 DLC because GTA Online emerged as a “cash cow” shortly after launch.
Joe Robino, who was a senior camera and virtual cinematographer working in Rockstar’s New York office from 2010 to 2016, spoke on YouTube channel SanInPlay about why this much-hyped GTA 5 story DLC fell by the wayside after release of GTA 5 in September. 2013.
“A lot of the team went to make Red Dead Redemption 2 right away and I took on this other project which was a standalone DLC for GTA that never came out and was a smash hit,” Robino revealed.
“That was my thing. I was one of the main editors, camera artists and stage stuff. We split our teams into two. I stayed on GTA Online and then on this DLC, that Steven Ogg [the actor who played Trevor Philips] was a very important part of
“And then some of the team overlapped and went to RDR2 early, and then we did this [flipped motion], because when that game was released, we spent so much money… a lot of that stuff still ended up making it, I believe, into later iterations of GTA Online, I think. So it’s not like they wasted it.
“It was really good. But when GTA Online came out, it was such a cash cow and people were loving it so much that it was hard to argue that a standalone DLC would top it. I think looking back now you could probably do both. But that was a business decision they made. I was a little upset about it.
“That was actually a lot of the reason I was a little sour at the time. Because I was like you guys WTF? This s**t is awesome. Let’s continue. Let’s get this s**t over with.”
IGN has reached out to Rockstar for comment.
Fans have had bits and pieces of information about GTA 5’s fantasy story DLC over the years. Indeed, Steven Ogg has talked about it and what it would have involved. “Trevor would be undercover, he was working with the feds,” Ogg said. We’ve shot some of that stuff with James Bond Trevor, where he’s still kind of an af**k-up, but he’s doing his best. Then it just disappeared and they never did it, they never followed it up.”
GTA Data has also revealed a reference to Trevor with a jetpack, which suggests that the story mode DLC was reused in GTA Online, as Robino says. In 2018, Rockstar was finally revealed GTA Online Doomsday Heist Missions along with the Thruster, a jetpack that is still exclusive to the multiplayer mode to this day.
Rockstar is now focused on getting GTA 6 ready for the Fall 2025 release window. There are a number of questions fans have about Rockstar’s plans, including whether GTA 6, unlike GTA 5, will receive story DLC. And what happens to the current version of GTA Online when GTA 6 inevitably introduces its own version?
Meanwhile, in the same interview, Robino discussed the well-documented crisis and secrecy Rockstar staff endured while working on GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. “We’re probably halfway there. [the GTA5 story DLC], and we put a pause on it,” he said. “I was also doing GTA Online at the time and I was also doing RDR2. We all were. We’ve been working hard, man. For six or seven years, I worked almost 365 days a year with our team.”
For years, Rockstar had a notorious reputation within the video game industry for the brutal difficulty in creating Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead games. However, following the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 and shocking stories about the human cost of its development, media reports suggested that changes were made to the company’s culture to avoid the same thing happening during the development of GTA 6.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.