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As if there were any doubt, there will be no single-player DLC for Grand Theft Auto V

As if there were any doubt, there will be no single-player DLC for Grand Theft Auto V

While Grand Theft Auto V has been a tremendous success, its lack of single-player DLC has been a source of sadness for a lot of players.

Way back in 2013, Rockstar was promising “big plans for substantial additions in 2014 continuing Michael, Franklin and Trevor's action, mayhem and unexpected adventures in Southern San Andreas”. But while GTA Online has received a steady supply of additional content, there has to date not been any new offline content.

Rumour would have you believe that the colossal success of GTA Online meant that all available studio resources were funnelled that way. Rockstar, however, has never ruled out a single player expansion for the game – until now.

“It was not really a conscious decision, it’s just what happened,” director of design Imran Sarwar told Game Informer, confirming that there will indeed be no single-player DLC. “With GTA V, the single-player game was absolutely massive and very, very complete. It was three games in one. The next-gen versions took a year of everyone’s time to get right, then the online component had a lot of potential, but to come close to realizing that potential also sucked up a lot of resources.

“We did not feel single-player expansions were either possible or necessary. 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.”

Sarwar insists, however, that this is not a policy that necessarily applies to all future releases.

“We would love to do more single-player add-ons for games in the future,” he claimed. “As a company we love single-player more than anything, and believe in it absolutely – for storytelling and a sense of immersion in a world, multiplayer games don’t rival single-player games.”

Elsewhere in the interview Sarwar also admits that the brakes may be put on new GTA Online content to try and encourage players to hop over to the developer’s new title.

“We don’t yet have a fixed end point in mind, but the rollout of updates may change a little in order to encourage players to try Red Dead Redemption II when it launches,” he said of GTA Online’s potential lifespan. “It would be great to have players splitting time between two incredible worlds, but we shall see how things evolve.

“One of the enjoyable things about working on a project like this is that you can iterate quickly, and change and evolve plans fairly quickly too, so we don’t have to be as clear in our plans as with other projects.”


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