On Christmas Day, a big GTA 5 leak revealed that Rockstar Games had some single-player DLC planned for the open-world crime sim. Though none of them were released, what was uncovered by online sleuths is interesting all the same.
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According to an Insider Gaming report, Rockstar apparently scrapped eight planned GTA 5 expansions. This was revealed by the publishing of the gameās full source code around Christmas, which contains references to the unreleased DLC as well as the scripting for the game to run. Hereās the full list of canceled expansions referenced in the leak:
āSP Assassination Packā
āSP Manhunt Packā
āSP Norman Packā
āAgent Trevorā
āRelationship Packā
āEnterprise Packā
āPrologue DLCā
āLibertyV DLCā
Itās difficult to ascertain exactly what each one means, though thereās plenty to speculate about. Most notably, GTA 5 DLC mightāve let us play as Trevor as he performs the duty of some sort of agent. The āRelationship Packā might have introduced dating or even marriage to Los Santos. Perhaps Rockstar planned to take trip back to GTA IVās Liberty City for who-knows-what shenanigans. Thereās also the Prologue, which probably sets up the main gameās events, and the āManhunt Pack,ā which could be a callback to Rockstar Gamesā 2003 stealth-action game of the same name. Your guess is as good as mine.
What Stopped Rockstar From Dropping GTA 5 DLC?
While Rockstar clearly had plans for single-player DLC, it likely never produced those expansions due to the runaway success of GTA Online. Itās generated nearly half a billion dollars per year since launch, so it made sense for Rockstar Games to focus on this money-making machine.
However, in 2017, the studio told Game Informer that other factors influenced the decision to skip GTA 5 DLC. Director of design Imran Sarwar said that the next-gen versions of GTA 5 took a while to get right, GTA Online hogged resources, and Red Dead Redemption 2 was around the corner.
āThe combination of these three factors means for [GTA 5], we did not feel single-player expansions were either possible or necessary, but we may well do them for future projects,ā Sarwar said. āAt Rockstar, we will always have bandwidth issues because we are perfectionists and to make huge complex games takes a lot of time and resources. Not everything is always possible, but we still love single-player open-world games more than anything. I donāt think you could make a game like GTA 5 if you didnāt like single-player games and trying to expand their possibilities!ā
Kotaku has reached out to Rockstar Games for comment.
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Itās worth noting that Red Dead Redemption 2, which came out in October 2018, hasnāt received any single-player DLC. Maybe that will change as Rockstar Games shifts all of its focus and resources to GTA 6, which launches sometime in 2025
