GTA Online Is Not the Reason Why Rockstar Games Scrapped 8 GTA V DLCs, Bully 2, and Midnight Club 5

The recent leaks Rockstar Games faced are continuing to make waves. Although they are connected to the 2022 September hacks, the newest details that surfaced on the internet are tied to many canceled GTA V DLCs, a sequel to Bully, and more. GTA Online has recently started trending since it is seemingly responsible for the various canceled projects. But is it really the case? Did Rockstar Games cancel its ambitious story-based DLC plans for GTA V in favor of GTA Online to make more money?

Well, the actual answer seems to be a little complicated, but it’s not that difficult to understand. This article will try to explain the reason GTA Online is facing backlash following yesterday’s source code leaks.

Here’s why developers actually canceled GTA V story DLCs

Amidst the ongoing criticism GTA Online is receiving, Managing Partner & Director of ‘X’ Content at GamePassTracker Synth Potato took to social media to clear the confusion. Going by his post, it looks like Rockstar Games didn’t really promote GTA Online over GTA V story-based expansions. Instead, the multiplayer title helped in boosting the single-player projects in the long run. But there looks to be more depth to the story than what was earlier thought.

In his post on X, Potato explained, “GTA 5’s Story DLCs, Bully 2 and Midnight Club 5 weren’t cancelled in favour of GTA Online according to devs speaking anonymously. According to sources in 2014 Leslie Benzies (One of the most important producers at Rockstar) and the Housers got into a huge disagreement due to Leslie’s desire to focus more on Online titles solely over Single-Player for the future of Rockstar. Proof of this is what Benzies is currently making, an online Fortnite-esque “platform” titled Everywhere.” Leslie Benzies is a Scottish video game producer. He was mostly involved in all the GTA titles before leaving the studio.

Leslie parted ways with Rockstar Games in mid-2014. His departure resulted in more staff leaving the studio. Interestingly, many of the members who left were working on GTA V story DLCs. This led to an indefinite halt of the expansions. Simply because Rockstar Games’ team had to hire new people and train them from scratch to work on the RAGE engine since Red Dead Redemption 2 was also in early development.

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During this period, the GTA Online team was doing very well while making impressive progress. Seeing this, Rockstar decided to offer them more resources to expand the Online title. The decision ultimately paid off as well as more players got attracted.

Further in his post, Potato wrote about GTA V’s DLCs being dropped due to the lack of a team and how RDR2’s expansion led to Rockstar Games focusing on that title. The post reads, “By late 2015 the dream of a GTA 5 story expansions had died as the Housers decided to shift all their focus to Red Dead Redemption 2[…] Ultimately, RDR2 became by far Rockstar’s largest ever title in sheer scale and detail, GTAO made sure Rockstar was secure financially during this time which allowed them to fully focus on one singular title over releasing multiple smaller titles so in that way, yes GTAO affected how Rockstar makes games.”

Throughout RDR2’s development phase, GTA Online was a driving force for Rockstar Games. The game provided the studio with much-needed financial strength to keep working on the sequel. Subsequently, Rockstar Games has turned its attention to bigger games that take way longer to develop than small games that are released often.

In this way, GTA Online did affect the entire situation –  but not in a manner first believed, though.

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