GTA V DLC revolving around Trevor Phillips was shelved by Rockstar due to the unprecedented success of GTA Online, which had become a massive revenue generator, a former Rockstar developer has claimed this week.
Fans who have played or are still grinding GTA V have long been disappointed that the best-selling game never really got any DLC similar to GTA IV‘s iconic The Lost and Damned or The Ballad of Gay Tony expansion packs. And, in what may be a sting to many gamers, it was actually on the menu for a while before GTA Online exploded in popularity.
While speaking on a podcast with YouTuber SanInPlay this week, former GTA senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer Joseph Rubino told fans there was actually a Trevor-themed DLC story in the works once upon a time.
The project started up around the time GTA V intitially launched, he explained. Rubino’s development team was divided into two projects—one focusing on Red Dead Redemption 2 and the other (including himself) tasked with building a story based on Trevor being a spy, “I kinda took on this other project that was a standalone DLC for GTA that never came out… it was kickass,” the developer revealed.
The decision to eventually can the standalone DLC centered on Trevor was attributed to the overwhelming success of GTA Online, Rubino added. “When GTA Online came out,” he said, “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.”
That left the Trevor story, which many GTA V fans say they would have loved to play, in limbo before it was eventually cancelled entirely.
As for how long it had been in the works before the bosses came down and diverted everything into GTA Online, Rubino revealed he had been “about halfway done.” The developer went on to express his disappointment with the DLC’s cancellation: “That was a business decision they made, and I was a little upset about that.”
