GTA 5 Story DLC Allegedly Scrapped Because of GTA Online’s “Cash Cow” Success

A former cinematics editor who worked on GTA 5 has said Rockstar cancelled a single-player story DLC because of GTA Online’s breakout success as a “cash cow.”

The detail emerges from the SanInPlay YouTube channel , which recently spoke to Joseph Robino, who was a senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer at Rockstar from 2010 to 2016.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about cancelled GTA 5 DLC, as earlier this year in April, Trevor Philips’ voice actor, Steven Ogg, said his character originally had an expansion planned. The expansion would have supposedly starred Trevor as a Federal Investigation Bureau agent.

Now, according to Robino, that single-player DLC fell to the wayside after GTA Online proved to be wildly popular.

“A lot of the team went to do Red Dead Redemption 2 right away, and I took on this other project that was a standalone DLC for GTA that never came out, and it was kick-ass,” says Robino. “That was my thing. I was one of the main editors, camera artists, and on-stage stuff. We split our teams into two. I stayed on GTA Online and then this DLC, which Steven Ogg [the actor who played Trevor] was a very important part of.”

Robino continues on, estimating that the GTA 5 story DLC was roughly halfway through development before cancellation. He says some of that work was put into later iterations of GTA Online . Robino also confirms the DLC would have focused on Trevor as an FBI agent, and adopted a tone that was “James Bond Trevor.”

“It was really, really good. But 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 outcompete that. I think, looking back now, you could probably do both. But that was a business decision they made. I was a little upset about that,” Robino explains.

“That actually was a lot of the reason for me being a little sour at that time. Because I was like, yo, WTF, guys? This s**t’s awesome. Let’s keep going. Let’s finish this s**t.”

Robino also comments a bit on Rockstar’s notorious crunch of the time, as he was working on GTA 5 , GTA Online , and Red Dead Redemption 2 simultaneously saying “We worked a lot, man. For six or seven years, I was working almost 365 days a year with our team.”

Of course, Rockstar’s current focus is squarely on Grand Theft Auto 6 , which is currently set for a Fall 2025 release window. The big question right now is what the future of GTA Online looks like, and if a new iteration will be introduced with GTA 6 or not. Rockstar’s priorities may have shifted over the years, so we’ll have to wait and see if GTA 6 could have any additional story content planned, or if GTA Online will continue to be the focus.