“GTA V’s single player content has been cancelled due to the success of GTA Online”

Developer Rockstar Games has released some pretty impressive single-player expansions for a number of games in the past. Think Undead Nightmare in Red Dead Redemption and The Ballad of Gay Tony in GTA IV. Surprisingly, Rockstar’s most successful game, GTA V, has never had a single-player expansion.

According to Joseph Rubino, this is due to the huge success of GTA Online. Rubino was the lead camera artist and virtual cinematographer at Rockstar Games. GTA Online was an absolute cash cow for Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games, and was so successful that creating new content for GTA Online made more sense than developing single-player content. There were previously rumors that single-player content was in the works for GTA Online. Rubino now confirms those rumors.

According to rumors, the expansion will revolve around the character Trevor working undercover with the FBI. He must be some sort of James Bond Trevor. Rubino also seems to confirm this rumor by saying that he was working on this project. The Trevor expansion was in the works while another team was developing Red Dead Redemption 2.

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“That was one of my favorite things,” Rubino said. “I was one of the lead editors and camera artists and did a lot of the second unit work on stage. Then we split our team in two, so I stayed on GTA Online and then this DLC. [Trevor actor] Steven Ogg was a very important part, and then some of the team members overlapped and went to Red Dead Redemption 2 early on.

“What happened was that when GTA Online came out, it was such a big cash cow and people loved it so much that it was hard to make an argument that standalone DLC would outsell that in the competition.”

Due to the success of GTA Online, which made a huge amount of money, it was decided not to continue with a separate single-player expansion. According to Rubino, this was a purely business decision, and all the focus went to GTA Online. At the time it was a shock to him that the downloadable content was cancelled, but the camera artist says that some elements and ideas from the downloadable content were incorporated into GTA Online.

Rockstar Games continues to support GTA Online with new content and updates. At the same time, the famous studio is developing GTA 6. This game will be released in 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X.

You can buy the enhanced version of GTA V Next-gen here.