GTA online Killed Single Player DLC Change my mind! & Rockstar is union busting?
Yeah, I um hate this job. It’s a Gundam. He’s just a piece of crap. Grand Theft Auto, a game series that every generation will have its iteration that blows their mind. It’s like a right of passage. You know, we all have that one GTA we waited for that was delayed at least three times. San Andreas and GTA 4 were those GTA for me. In fact, they floored me. Master Shake summed it up best when those commercials hit. One who survived. Get this done and we’ll talk. Oh man, now that I have seen that on TV, that is the shiz knight. When Grand Theft Auto 5 launched, something felt different. Despite the visuals being way better, the gameplay felt more hollow than previous iterations. Krobyat did a video comparison that went viral back in the day. However, the most glaring thing about Grand Theft Auto 5 was the absence of single player DLC. We all assumed that the DLC would arrive within a year or two. GTA Online success might have killed the single player DLC. I’ll never forgive this. By this point in GTA 4’s life cycle, it already had two big single player DLC additions, The Lost in the Dam and the Ballad of Gay Tony. Meanwhile, Rockstar hasn’t said anything about substantial add-ons to GTA 5 that would continue the exploits of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor since December of 2013. We currently have all the key members of the team that launched Grand Theft Auto 5 focused on supporting GTA Online in every capacity. The community we’ve been able to foster is massive, growing each day, and we have so many ideas that have yet to make it into the game. The evolution of GTA Online on these newer platforms is also an exciting prospect as the power of those systems is going to allow us to achieve even more ways to sell you garbage. What this actually means in normal people speak is we have a few human beings with little to no impulse control willing to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on digital litter. This is far more lucrative than single player DLC has ever been. Gaming is getting like content creation. It’s all mindless slop. In 2018, Red Dead Redemption dropped, making it abundantly clear that single player DLC for GTA 5 was never coming. But Red Dead Redemption 2 soon shared the same fate as GTA 5, if not worse, when you think about it. One way Red Dead Redemption 2 differs from its predecessors, however, is the lack of single player DLC. The first game saw massive expansions with The Undead Nightmare, but Rockstar hasn’t released any single player content and made it clear that they don’t have any intentions to do so. The short answer for why Red Dead Redemption 2 didn’t get a single player DLC lies completely with GTA Online. At some point, Rockstar had a single player DLC planned for Grand Theft Auto 5. But GTA Online was such a huge success, much bigger than Rockstar expected. This led to Rockstar focusing wholeheartedly on GTA Online, providing new content and changes for years. Rockstar adopted the same approach to Red Dead Redemption 2, opting to focus on expanding Red Dead Online instead of creating single player content. Simply put, GTA Online is a massive money maker, even boosting revenue for Take 2 in 2019, years after its launch. On top of that, Red Dead Redemption 2 was in development for seven years and likely had a huge cost for Rockstar. Supporting Red Dead Online is much better way of making back that cost in the business. We call this foreshadowing. Rockstar had high hopes that Red Dead Redemption 2 online would be the same money printer machine that GTA 5 Online was. but it wasn’t leading to the online experience being riddled with hackers and bugs that the community itself had to deal with before Rockstar abandoned the game. Messages like that means that Mo is moving you to his lobby and which is kind of interesting. You even can receive such messages while playing in a single mode. Anyway, a few minutes after that, my horse suddenly jumped really high up to the sky. And at this point, it was obvious that Zar is a cheater. I’ve tried to change the lobby, but it obviously didn’t help because I repeat, cheater can move you to his lobby at any moment. After that, I said that stream is probably over since trolls like this have no personal life and that’s why they have a lot of time to, you know, harass other players. And trust me, I’ve said it as politely as person possibly can under these circumstances. But it’s still got this motor trigger it. And he promised me that he will crush me every day. Now, not only on the streams, but every day. And so he did. For almost a month, I was crushed every day unless I was playing in the evening. This probably because of the time zone. I’ve sent a report to the Rockstar via social club. I’ve made a tweet on Twitter describing the situation, but it didn’t help at all. If you playing on a PC, there is something you definitely have to know. All that cheater need to crush you is to know your game tag. That’s it. If he knows your game tuck, he can crush you at any second and you will not even know who did this. If he wants to hide his name, he will do this and you will not find out who is crushing you. But even if you know exactly who is crushing you, it’s still not going to help because there is nothing you can do. I guess this all could have been avoided if the player base would stop being withholding and spend every dime they had on the in-game gold currency. I want you to keep in mind that Red Dead Redemption 2 is the fourth bestselling video game of all time. And still, that wasn’t enough. Knowing all of this, I’ve given up all hopes on a Max Pay 4. It’s a wash, dude. You should be shaved. Who’s up for it then? A funeral to celebrate one year of Red Dead Redemption online being abandoned. Dress up in your best funeral attire. Get your friends to join. Tag us in pics and use the hashtag below. Save the date, Wednesday, July 13th. Are you in? Red Dead Redemption online players hold in-game funeral due to the lack of updates. Just a day after the Red Dead Redemption online players agreed to hold a mock funeral in protest of the lack of updates, Rockstar killed the game officially. That’s one way to up your critics, I guess. While there is a chaotic side of me that hopes the timing was deliberate, what’s one more to the player base, huh? Ultimately, it’s for the best. Players and Rockstar can both move on with their lives. Newslash, Rockstar moved on with their lives a long time ago. The minute this didn’t pull in like $500 million in a year, they were like, “Okay, this is done.” Very on brand for Modern Take and Rockstar. The company willing to sue modders over making better updates of classic GTA games. This is fine. Rockstar versus GTA modders lawsuit gets a major update. The long and the short of it is I’m not even going to read all of this. um after, you know, ringing them through the coals and kind of trying to plant it as the modders knew that Rockstar was releasing remasters of their games and this was undermining it in some way. They’ve agreed to settle out of court for an undisclosed amount of money that I’m sure the modders don’t have. Point being, Red Dead Redemption 2 didn’t make hands over fist money online for Rockstar, so they just abandoned the player base and focused on GTA Online. Again, this is corporate greed on a Robocop scale. I’d buy that for a dollar. Christmas Day of 2023, the GTA 5 leaks were a bitter pill to swallow for single player fans. Rumor stated that Rockstar cancelled eight single player DLCs and a handful of other games, including the long- aaited Bully 2, which now looking it up, it’s been 20 years since Bully came out. You’re not getting another one, just like I’m not getting Max Pain. They’re both on ice. So, this was it. My easy retirement money. My bloodstained 401k. GTA 5 source code leaked confirmed the cancellation of single player DLC’s and revealed many more. It seems that there were plans for eight single player DLCs, breaking the full source code for GTA V has been publicly leaked. The source code was previously traded between individuals before now and Trevor. So, but and we also had that really cool [ __ ] of there was and I forget if it was DLC, I have no idea, but where Trevor was going to be like a undercover he start he works for the feds and we and we did shoot some of that stuff with like James Bond Trevor. He’s still kind of a but he’s doing his best to pretend to be like and it was and we shot some stuff and then it just disappeared and never did it and they never followed up on it. But I thought that would be cool. Like he gets hired. They went to GTA online, I believe, for that stuff. Yeah. And some more DLC. Oh well, you get nothing. You get some more GTA Online. Essential Sports gave more context to the situation, which, you know, I take as a grain of salt personally. Leslie parted ways with Rockstar Games mid 2014. His departure resulted in more staff leaving the studio. Interesting. Many of the members who left were working on GTA 5 story DLC. Definite. This led to an indefinite halt of the expansion simply because Rockstar Games team had to hire new people to train them from scratch to work on the Rage engine since Red Dead Redemption 2 was also in early development. Blah. Years later, there was a story stating that they gave up on the single player DLC completely to work on Red Dead Redemption 2. GTA 5 that never came out. And we’ve also never really worked on another game, but I like the idea of it that was a GTA zombie game. That would have been funny. I think that could have been quite fun. What was the GTA 5 DLC? It was one when you played as Trevor, but he was a secret agent. Oh, it was it was cute. It was It never quite came together and it was never finished. It was about half done when it got abandoned. But I think if that had come out, probably wouldn’t have got to make Red Dead 2. So, it was always there’s always compromises. But it was, you know, I like making the stories. For me, I love the model of GTA 4 when you had the extra stories coming afterwards or Red Dead one when you had the zombie pack coming afterwards. I like just doing these extra things. So, I would I would I personally like to have done more of that in that company. Um, and with stuff we’re doing in the future, we’re going to try and come up with worlds where we can add more stories that never came out and it was kickass. That was my thing. I was one of the main editors, camera artist, and onstage stuff. We split our teams into two. I stayed on GTA online and then this DLC, which Steven Org, actor who played Trevor Phillips, was a very important part of, and then some of the team over overlapped and went to Red Dead Redemption 2 early on. And then we just kind of did this because when that game got shelved, we spent so much money. A lot of stuff did end up making it, I believe, into later iterations of Grand Theft Auto line, I think. So, not likely they wasted it. Fans knew this for years that most of the online missions for GTA Online consisted of assets and storylines taken from all the defunct single player DLC. This isn’t exactly news. The Doomsday Heist was made from the corpse of the DLC 1 in the PS3 and 360 versions where the references to the Trevor DLC near those radar dishes that you raid, they got removed when Rockstar cancelled single player updates. Oh, lovely. They’re like teasing like here’s something. Here it comes. Here it comes. Just kidding. Five more shark cards. Strauss Zelnik needs more blood from young men to keep him juxy. During this period, the GTA online team was doing very well 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 a track. GTA Online has its moments when you have your friends, but honestly, it’s extremely mid otherwise. And still, for some reason, it made an ass ton of money from people willing to spend big to live that luxury life, even if it’s in a video game, which says a lot about the current state of our society. Then, the Grand Theft Auto Online RP scene exploded 2 years later in 2015, which I’m sure really added to the GTA Online hype and selling shark cards, but that’s a whole other can of stupid worms that have autism. The gaming industry has been pushing for live services for years. The CEO of EA did an interview with Vice that I’ve used thousands of times before where he’s fantasizing about collecting data from your shoes in your refrigerator to see what you eat and then link it to your in-game purchases in the Sims or FIFA. These people want to monetize every second of your existence and harvest your data like the Borg from Star Trek. GTA Online brought in billions of dollars and Rockstar locked in so hard it was ridiculous. Singleplayer DLC and GTA or Red Dead Redemption is now officially a thing of the past. They don’t give a rat’s ass about that when they could sell you a piece of a mission from a DLC and you would eat it up, run in game and buy the new aesthetic clothing. People have more clothes in GTA Online than they do in reality. It’s frightening. Let me just take a moment to talk to you about Strauss Zelnik, a vampire. One of his most famous quotes was talking about the price per minute value that they offer with their games. It’s so just unhinged. I don’t know how to process it. Still get me the article. Yes. But I mean, you don’t want to generalize too much from what’s going on in linear entertainment because the increase in subscription pricing and linear entertainment is really a reflection of the fact that too many streaming services were underproducing to acquire customers. And then they realized those customers were not durable and the LTVs were upside down. So, they were basically adjusting their pricing to make sure that the LTVs are potentially positive. And I think there’s still more pain to come for services. And I can wax eloquent if you want, although it has nothing to do with our business. I don’t know what the hell I just read, but when it’s not coming from an insane psychotic looking CEO with eyes that look like they came out of Satan’s [ __ ] I can’t really deliver it with the same sort of robotic cadence. In terms of pricing for any entertainment property, basically the algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage. Which is to say that the per hour al which is to say the per hour value times the number of expected hours plus the terminal value that’s perceived by the customer and ownership if the title is owned or subscribed to. And you’ll see that bears out in every kind of entertainment vehicle. This is the E equals MC squared for soulless [ __ ] wearing Edward Green shoes on a daily basis without socks. This is a formula devised by sickopants all huffing each other’s farts trying to figure out how to put out a game for the autistic maxes to absolutely and I quote lock into. People who play GTA aren’t humans. They are numbers on spreadsheets to these CEOs. I’m sure GTA 6 is taking this long to make sure that it is a massive hit with the most psychologically addicting mechanics they can come up with for the online mode. They want this to hit your kids like a nice pipe of They believe the game will make billions in months and not years. GTA 6 will earn 7.6 6 billion in two months and be the largest gaming release of all time, investment firm predicts. If this is true, Grand Theft Auto 6 will do more in 2 months than GTA 5 did in 11 years to accomplish. Once again, take this as a grain of salt. This is all speculation that changes wildly depending on which analyst a journalist decides to speak to. The prediction literally a year ago used to be 3 billion in a year, but now it’s just exploded. Printing money. Rockstar reveals GTA Plus memberships will now let anyone play GTA Online and it’s not trailer 3, but it does bode well for GTA 6. Could GTA 6 online include in memberships, too? This is Disney Plus for Zoomers and Gen Alpha? I got nothing else for it. I don’t even understand the logistics of this. Wouldn’t people just buy the game? But then maybe people are so addicted to GTA Online that they actually don’t care about the single player mode, which would really blow my mind. Analyst says it expects a $100 price point for GTA 6 estimates. Rockstar development cost is over 1.5 billion and predicts it will earn 10 billion in its lifetime and another 500 million annually from GTA Online. I’m not even going to talk about the rumored $100 game price point that every company is salivating over. And it seems like it’s a very real possibility. And the sad part is people are more than willing to pay for this. Judging by the replies I got to my tweet a few months ago on this subject. There are people that actually said they’d pay $250,000 to play this game. You have no idea how addicted people are to I guess Grand Therap who cares about sunshine and grass. I need more virtual ass. I think the point I’m trying to make is that Rockstar and Take 2 aren’t some benevolent company. They know if they give you an experience on GTA 6 that you enjoy and then you can recreate some moments yourself online and maybe buy a digital fur coat while you’re at it, that’s the end game. Basically, the death of single player DLC to me is the death of art, the death of story expansion and finding out a little bit more about your favorite characters. And it is a crime, especially of how good Red Dead Redemption 2 was. Oh well, what can you do, right? It just shows the consumer culture we now live in. Back in April of 2024, this came and went and nobody gave a rat’s ass. Take 2 announces layoffs while cancelling multiple indevelopment projects. The GTA 6 publisher is laying off around 5% of its workforce or around 579 workers. Now, more recently, in October of 2025, Grand Theft Auto studio accused of union busting after firing. Union says between 30 and 40 people were terminated. Rockstar Games parent company sites gross misconduct. Sadly, this article was paywalled and Jason Swire has blocked me on Twitter for saying he looks like he buys feet pics. And I stand by that quote. But allegedly, a dev that works at Rockstar and lives in a constant state of fear took to some fords to shed some light on the situation. Hello everyone, I’m a Rockstar employee of many years here. Understandably, I want to remain anonymous due to the retaliation of the company. I may be willing to verify I’m an employee with Spider Vice via DM if required. I’m also a member of the union. I’ve been reading a lot of discussions on here elsewhere about the firing of more than 34 of my colleagues last week, 31 in the UK, three in Canada, and have seen a lot of disinformation and lies that are really concerning, particularly concerning how so many folks are willing to believe the company’s excuses. Last week, my colleagues who were in the studio were each individually messaged by HR for a short friendly meeting under a friendly guise of, “Hey, you’re free for a quick chat.” Upon attending this meeting, they were handed an envelope with a short letter stating that their employment had been terminated for gross misconduct regarding posts made in the Discord. That’s they [ __ ] up. They use Discord. They failed to provide any evidence when asked, nor was any stated in the letter and did not divulge any other information or reasoning and no other reason. They refused their right to a union representative in the disciplinary meeting which is against UK employment laws and were frog marched out of the studio with the meeting lasting less than 5 minutes. For colleagues who were not in the studio that day, they received phone calls from HR that lasted less than 2 minutes telling them they were fired and that they’d received the same letter as above. I’m aware of one employee who had a panic attack at the moment and HR hung up on them during the panic attack, not caring at all about their well-being. Well, it is Rockstar. These colleagues of mine were hard workers who have spent many years at Rockstar in critical roles with colleagues who have been at Rockstar for more than 18 years and none of them have ever had a disciplinary in that time. They are not easily replaced and will certainly affect us making our project deadlines. These are very serious artists, animators, QA testers, designers, programmers, and producers, including leads. all super talented people who were proud of their work over multiple Rockstar titles. And all they wanted was the best for Rockstar and their fellow colleagues. Some of these members were off sick, recovering from surgery or on paternity leave, fired without pay, losing their careers, and putting them in hardship in the leadup to Christmas, and even potentially losing their visas to work in the UK. Let me make this clear. I never saw any discussion leaking of Rockstar projects in the Union Discord. The only ever discussion was around unionization efforts and the working conditions at Rockstar. Discord wasn’t public. It was a private Discord group that only contained Rockstar employees and the IWGB union officials. This was union busting and nothing else. Everyone fired was a union member. They were also predominantly from those who were on the union organization committees of each UK studio to seek recognition and being engaged in collective bargaining allowing us to negotiate directly with management on key issues that affect us. Worsening crunch, inadequate pay, and inflexible working arrangements. They have fired over 34 of us now. There were over 250 of us in the union employee discord. There is a fear that they will get away with this if there’s nothing done to stop them. yada yada yada. The long and the short of it is, cuz this is incredibly long still, that the people left behind now live in a constant state of fear. After the firing of these members, the morale of the studio has hit rock bottom. Things are incredibly bad for those working. He also has a link to help fund and support Rockstar workers for unfair dismissals. And this doesn’t really surprise me coming from Take 2 and Rockstar. The more successful Take 2 has become, the more cutthroat the company has been. Let’s not forget that modders got treated like crap for the bottom line of GTA Online. And now even employees are not safe from the wrath of their corporate masters. I know not everyone is in favor of unions. Sometimes they do more harm than good. But much like Open 4, Rockstar went after these people on trumped up charges. And lest we forget, Rockstar has a long history of crunch. Many of the most harrowing stories shared by current and former employees, anecdotes of damaged relationships, mental breakdowns, and heavy drinking at work were impossible to print without risking the individuals involved might be identified. Given Rockstar’s complex on non-disclosure agreements and possible repercussions for violating them, we aired on the side of caution, being as cautious as possible in this piece, which meant leaving out some of the roughest details we heard. Basically, Rockstar does sit there and go, “Oh, you could talk to journalists.” But if you tell journalists like, “Oh my god, they had be working 18 hours this one day.” Rockstar would fire you and say, “Oh, you gave too much information about GTA 6.” Maybe the delay has a lot to do with the firing of employees over this union and the soon-to-be firing of other employees part of the union. Odds are we won’t know the full story till 10 years from now minimum when we won’t give a damn and GTA 7 will be teased and that’ll keep the fans complacent. My overall original goal was to write about how Grandan Theft Auto’s online mode killed the single player DLC, but I think that’s something we all know. And then I just sort of fell down the rabbit hole of Rockstar’s treatment of employees, which doesn’t seem to be favorable or great. I’m not going to be a moral busy body and tell you how to think, feel, or buy. It’s ultimately up to you. It’s just I think it’s best that everyone who’s waiting for Rockstars GTA 6 to remember this. They don’t really care about you. So maybe stop worshiping them as gods.
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0:00 intro
0:10 right of passage
0:59 the DLC that never came
2:34 RDR2 shared the same fate
3:56 RDR2 online
7:44 gta5 leaks
12:29 gaming autisim
13:28 take2 ceo
15:31 billion dollar dream
18:37 rockstar union busting