In 2013, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto Online, producing a preliminary multiplayer platform using GTA 5 as a base, but unfortunately, it did not receive a positive reception. It was buggy as all hell, suffered from immense network instability issues, and felt a bit barren when it came to content delivery.
In a recent interview, one former Rockstar Games developer who worked on GTA Online, amongst other things, revealed that the team was fearful that it would all fail. Amid internal concerns about content depth, replayability, and longevity, the consensus was that it might not pan out as the great success they all hoped it would be.
GTA Online Could Have Failed, Developers Thought
In a new interview with Eldorado.gg, Matt Freedman, a former Rockstar designer who worked on Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA 5, and Max Payne 3, took a deep dive into his time at the studio. In one segment, talked turned to the commercial performance of Grand Theft Auto 5, which is one of the best-selling games of all time.
Freedman revealed that the lofty heights the game has reached today are way above expectations. I mean, we’re talking about expectations that run back almost 15 years now, but still. He said:
It’s way more. It’s much bigger than I think anyone was expecting. And, as much as I’d love to say I was a big part of that, I think that’s all GTA Online.
Freedman explained that he put minimal work into GTA Online when he was at Rockstar. He was close enough to the project to weigh in on those expectations, though.
He did stress that, when it was all being put together, success was an afterthought. The developers just wanted to get it shaped up and out the door. But, for a while, a concern was floating around that things wouldn’t work out as intended:
We were all positive it was going to fail. Everyone thought this thing was going to fail. I remember QA testers coming up to me….
They came up to me and said, ‘We’ve got four hours of content for (the) online mode. To do everything in GTA Online, it’s four hours,’ or it was something like that.
It was really short, and they’re like: ‘We are in so much trouble, and we’re all sitting there going, let’s see what happens.’
As Freedman said, GTA Online has now become a phenomenon, so things absolutely landed with fans eventually, but the start of that road certainly was a rocky one.
Talk then turned to predictions around GTA 6 Online:
I’m really interested to see what they do with GTA 6 online. The thing that’s going to be interesting is GTA 6 Online would have started development when games as a service were huge, and it would have finished development as games as a service are crashing.
What are your expectations for GTA 6’s multiplayer platform? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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