For those of you entrenched in the GTA series, then you probably know that a number of GTA 5 expansions were tossed aside – but you might not know entirely why. Well, now we have at least some insight on some expansion cancellation reasons.
Rockstar Games dumped a number of GTA 5 expansions which was a bit of surprise to many given everything the game releases turns to gaming gold. But in these cases, a former GTA developer claims that the success of GTA Online thwarted expansion aspirations.
Those deep in the “know” discovered that at least three different DLC packs were once in development, but were eventually dumped. They even had names such as Agent Trevor, Alien Invasion and Zombie Apocalypse.
Steve Ogg, who played the wild and unpredictable Trevor in the 2013 game, recently spilled the beans that a “James Bond Trevor” DLC was actually in the works before the studio suddenly pulled the plug. “Trevor’s still kind of a screw-up, but he’s trying his best to act like a secret agent,” Ogg shared about his character’s story in the canceled expansion. “We filmed some stuff, and then it just vanished.”
And all of this comes down to the stratospheric rise of GTA Online, which took precident over the expansions.
James Rubino, a former Rockstar Games dev, said that “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.”
He continued, “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… I think looking back now I would say that you could probably do both, but that was a business decision that they made.”
This is what happens when you have a game this popular – it’s own success can shutter focus on other projects. But according to Rubino, all was not lost as he continued saying, “A lot of that stuff did end up making it, I believe, into later iterations of GTA Online, I think, so it’s not like they wasted it. It was really, really good.”
So yeah, this isn’t a negative story by any means. Its more a testament to how incredibly well-received GTA 5 has been. But as you know, GTA 6 is coming out next year, which should clearly be amazing given Vice City is making a comeback.