Grand Theft Auto V is one of the best-selling video games of all time, outselling entire series like Assassin’s Creed. So it’s still disappointing that Grand Theft Auto V never got any story-driven DLC. The franchise has had some incredible DLC in the past, like GTA 4’s excellent The Ballad of Gay Tony, and yet GTA 5 never got any. The planned existence of such DLC has long been the subject of rumors and leaks, and now a former Rockstar developer claims that this highly sought-after add-on was in development at one point, but was ultimately canceled due to GTA Online.
By appearing on the SanInPlay YouTube ChannelJoe Rubino has spoken about his work on GTA 5’s closed DLC. Rubino was a senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer at Rockstar from 2010 to 2016, according to his LinkedIn. Although work on the DLC seemed to be going well, he said, it was the success of GTA Online that ultimately caused its downfall.[The DLC] “It was really, really good,” Rubino says, “but when GTA Online came out, it was such a cash cow and people loved it so much that it was hard to make the case that a standalone DLC could top it.” So, he says, Rockstar decided to abandon the DLC.
Kotaku has reached out to Rockstar for comment.
Rubino gives only a brief glimpse of what the DLC might have contained, mentioning that Trevor’s actor Steven Ogg was a “very important” part of it and that the DLC was “awesome.” This view is backed up by Ogg himself, who confirmed last April that he had done voice and motion capture work on the GTA 5 DLC that would have followed Trevor on an undercover mission. Ogg referred to this version of the character as “James Bond Trevor.”
In the same stream where Ogg confirmed that the Trevor DLC was already in the works, Michael’s voice actor Ned Luke revealed that Rockstar had originally planned for all three protagonists to get their own DLC at some point after the base game’s release, but that was later scrapped. Rubino adds that some of what he worked on for the DLC will eventually make its way to GTA Online in some form. This may be why last year, a massive GTA Online leak revealed deleted content labeled “DLC Prologue” and “DLC LibertyV.”
While Rubino’s claims support previous theories that GTA Online caused the GTA 5 DLC drop, that appears to have only been part of the puzzle. In a 2017 interview with Game InformerDesign director Imran Sarwar said that the next-gen ports of GTA 5 took a while to develop, GTA Online tied up resources, and development of Red Dead Redemption 2 was imminent. “The combination of these three factors means that for [GTA 5]“We didn’t think single-player expansions were possible or necessary,” Sarwar said. He did, however, go on to say that Rockstar may offer story-driven DLC for future projects, so we can all hold out hope for GTA 6 story-driven DLC.