Rockstar Devs Thought GTA Online Would Fail

GTA Online’s lasting success was far from guaranteed inside Rockstar before launch. In an interview with Eldorado covered by IGN, former developer Matt Freedman said the team was convinced the mode would fail. According to him, the project was initially treated as an afterthought during the development of GTA 5.

Freedman credited much of GTA 5’s eventual success to the growth of GTA Online. He noted that investors now seek results comparable to the online mode, even though the team working on it did not expect that kind of impact. “When we were working on GTA Online, it was an afterthought,” he said. The former developer added that everyone thought it would fail, but the team still decided to do its best and see what happened.

Concerns were also being raised by the people testing the game. Freedman recalled QA testers saying it would take roughly four hours to complete everything available in GTA Online, although he qualified the figure by saying it was something like that. In his recollection, those testers believed the team was in serious trouble because there was so little content. That reaction shows how far the internal expectations were from the phenomenon GTA Online ultimately became.

IGN notes that Rockstar did display some ambition for the mode before it arrived. The company released a substantial trailer, offered media previews, and planned post-launch additions such as heists. Even so, there was not much to do initially beyond the usual open-world sandbox chaos. Some of the experience’s most exciting content would only arrive later, including the heists update.

According to Freedman, Rockstar responded quickly once the mode began taking off, following up with as much content as possible to keep it moving. IGN also recalls that the company had plans for GTA 5 single-player DLC, but those plans were scrapped after GTA Online required additional resources. The outlet reports that supporting the online mode, producing that single-player content, and developing Red Dead Redemption 2 at the same time was not considered feasible. Rockstar consequently leaned further into GTA Online.

For players, the interview does not announce an update, release window, price, or immediate change to GTA Online access. It does, however, provide a new perspective on how an initially short experience remained active for 13 years and continued receiving major updates. Even with GTA 6 approaching, IGN suggests the team may keep supporting the mode while it remains profitable. The source does not provide a final Rockstar decision on how long that support could continue.

It also remains unclear exactly when Rockstar’s internal view of GTA Online’s potential began to change. The company has shown continued commitment to the GTA 5 community on PC, including the announcement of an official nopixel RP server, but that does not settle its longer-term plans. According to the report, GTA 6 will launch as a single-player experience, while Rockstar has remained guarded about what it intends to do with online play beyond that. Freedman’s account therefore explains the past without confirming the future shape of the series’ multiplayer.

The story highlights how GTA’s biggest online phenomenon began amid doubts from the people building it. The contrast between the roughly four hours of content remembered by Freedman and 13 years of support shows a transformation the team apparently did not anticipate. Matt Freedman’s comments and the surrounding context about GTA Online’s evolution were published by IGN.