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 game’s full source code around Christmas, which contains references to the unreleased DLC as well as the scripting for the game to run. Here’s the full list of canceled expansions referenced in the leak:
- “SP Assassination Pack”
- “SP Manhunt Pack”
- “SP Norman Pack”
- “Agent Trevor”
- “Relationship Pack”
- “Enterprise Pack”
- “Prologue DLC”
- “LibertyV DLC”
It’s difficult to ascertain exactly what each one means, though there’s plenty to speculate about. Most notably, GTA 5 DLC might’ve let us play as Trevor as he performs the duty of some sort of agent. The “Relationship Pack” might have introduced dating or even marriage to Los Santos. Perhaps Rockstar planned to take trip back to GTA IV’s Liberty City for who-knows-what shenanigans. There’s also the Prologue, which probably sets up the main game’s events, and the “Manhunt Pack,” which could be a callback to Rockstar Games’ 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. It’s 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.
“The 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,” Sarwar said. “At 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 don’t think you could make a game like GTA 5 if you didn’t like single-player games and trying to expand their possibilities!”
Kotaku has reached out to Rockstar Games for comment.
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It’s worth noting that Red Dead Redemption 2, which came out in October 2018, hasn’t 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.
