A GTA V developer has said that GTA Online “was so much of a cash cow” that it no longer made sense for Rockstar to pursue developing DLC. Senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer Joseph Rubino shared in a recent interview how Rockstar had begun developing DLC for GTA V but the revenue flow for GTA Online gave reason for a new strategy with the added content. The GTA V developer told SanInPlay that he was directly involved with both projects and so saw both sides of why the DLC ended up being canceled. Dataminers previously exposed what is believed to be the aforementioned DLC and was going to be called Agent Trevor and jokingly referred to as James Bond Trevor.
Per SanInPlay (via VGC):
- “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 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.”
Not all was abandoned
Steven Ogg, the voice behind GTA’s Trevor, previously explained his frustration over how despite having shot some material for the DLC that would have further added character development, it just disappeared. Rubino explains that, of course, there were some sour feelings as the Trevor Undercover DLC project was tossed aside, just as it was about halfway completed, but then also shares how at least some of it made its way into GTA Online anyway.
“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.”
Per Streamily (via PC Gamer):
“We had that really cool sh’t where, and I forget if it was gonna be DLC, Trevor was gonna be undercover, he works for the feds. And we did shoot some of that stuff with like James Bond Trevor: he’s still kind of a f’ up, but he’s doing his best to pretend to be like [an agent]. We shot some stuff and then it just disappeared and [Rockstar] never did it, and they never followed up on it.”