GTA Online was a cash cow - Rockstar canceled the fifth game's DLC because of it

Former developer claims Rockstar Games canceled all GTA 5 DLC due to sudden success of GTA Online. Steve Ogg recently confirmed that the "James Bond Trevor" DLC was indeed in development at one point before the studio abruptly canceled it.

Last year data miners found evidence that eight DLCs were once planned for GTA 5, including titles like "Agent Trevor," "Alien Invasion" referenced throughout the base game, and "Zombie Apocalypse," which likely mirrored "Undead Nightmare" from Red Dead Redemption.

"He's still sort of bad, but he's doing his best to pretend [to be a secret agent]. We shot some stuff and then it just disappeared," Ogg said about his character's path in the doomed DLC.

Now we know who to blame for this sudden disappearance: the crazy success of GTA Online. Former Rockstar Games developer James Rubin, who was one of the main editors, cinematographers, and did other stuff for the game for six years, shared on the SanInPlay YouTube channel about his time in the "agent" Trevor DLC:

"We split our teams in two, so I stayed on GTA Online, and then on this DLC, a very important part of which was Steven Ogg, and then part of the team overlapped and went to Red Dead Redemption 2."

Rubin explains that after GTA Online's release "it was such a cash cow, and people loved it so much, that it was hard to argue that a standalone DLC would beat it... Looking back, I would say we could have done both, but it was a business decision they made."

However, Rockstar did not throw all the work in the dump. The developer says that many elements of the DLC eventually made their way into GTA Online.

Source: GamesRadar