At this point, Rockstar fans already know very well that the company decided to cancel Grand Theft Auto V story DLC in favor of the live service grind of Grand Theft Auto Online. Now, however, we have testimony on what it was like for the people who were in the trenches.
Joe Rubino has a Mobygames entry, where it listed him as a camera artist for Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto V. In a new interview with SanInPlay on YouTube, he revealed that he also worked on story content for Grand Theft Auto V.
As Joe explains, he was brought into Grand Theft Auto Online, while most of Rockstar set to work on Red Dead Redemption 2. However, he also got to do some of the preliminary work on Grand Theft Auto V’s story DLC. In Joe’s words:
“You what happened was, 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 a argument that a standalone DLC would out-compete that.
I think looking back now I would say that you could probably do both, but that was a business decision that they made and I was upset about that.”
And yes, Joe talked about and corroborated the rumored Trevor DLC. As we know it, Trevor was going to do several missions where he would go undercover, presumably doing work for the US intelligence machinery. When the news hit that the Trevor DLC was cancelled, Joe was upset.
“I was a little upset about that and actually was a lot of the reason for me being a little sour at that time. I was like “yo, what the f*** guys, this s***’s awesome, let’s keep going, let’s finish this s***.”
This wasn’t commented on by Joe, but other rumors also claimed that Rockstar would rework some of that DLC intended for Grand Theft Auto V, to be used as DLC on Grand Theft Auto Online. In particular, the Doomsday Heist and Diamond Casino Heist were originally meant for the story.
With Grand Theft Auto 6 now on the way, one hopes that Rockstar has reviewed how they make these decisions, for the betterment of the next installation. At this point, the company has also squeezed as much money out of fans for Grand Theft Auto Online, and the sentiment seems to be that even the loyal online players now are eager to see Rockstar give them something new to come with Grand Theft Auto 6.
The seemingly logical way forward is for Rockstar to keep both the story and online segments full to keep fans satisfied, but we’ll see how it goes when they release Grand Theft Auto 6 next year to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
