GTA 5’s story DLC was scrapped because GTA Online was a ‘cash cow’, cinematics editor claims

Yeah no shit.

Of course they were to go the low effort; high payout capitalist way.

This really show their lack of creative vision, compared to Cygames for example that made bank with a low maintenance gacha RPG that runs on chrome, but just released an entire fighting game and action rpg based on Granblue with a great presentation and gameplay. They didn't need to do it, they already have all the money from their gacha games, these premium games are just for fun.

Seems silly to me. Just cuz online made money doesn't mean your hard work on story dlc wouldn't also make money. Plenty of people like me never play online and would have happily paid for more story

You're not thinking corporate enough.
- With a simple NPV calc it's obvious why the dlc is a complete waste of time. I mean we could easily afford to hire another team that will quickly provide positive cashflow, but then the producers are going to wonder if consumers are spending less on x because of y, and x is what we used to project future revenue numbers to our board. If we don't reach the x projection and I get canned then I'll always regret having tried y. I mean sure y superceded all expectations, and made millions, but it also had like 800k in overhead. We should probably just lay of 300 developers who are willing to work 60 hour weeks for 40 hours of pay and decrease the level of qa/QC time on x so we can get started on x2 and push into prod, nevermind the bugs. Also I'll need you to work Sat because the system keeps throwing exception errors
Making content for online is way less work and makes more money in the longrun. You don't get whales spending thousands of dollars on a single player DLC.
- Sure, but there's only so much you can release for online. You don't want big content dumps, you want a steady stream, so you could surely have some devs working on a story DLC or two while pumping out that steam of stuff for online.
  
  Hire an online content team to complement your creative SP team, and then you get the best of both.
The online players are just that much more profitable that they don't want to risk them.

If even a small percentage of people who stop playing online to play the single player DLC feel satisfied and don't go back to online then they lose money over all.
Do you remember the time you were supposed to buy mobile apps, by paying a one time fee. How many apps are you able to buy now? Most switched to SaaS service because they realised this is a cash cow. I don't want to be a bad prophet but I think the game industry as a whole is also going slowly that direction.

This is frustrating to me because I love GTAVs story but couldn't care less about online.

Care about it? I haven't even played it!!
- I tried it briefly but I really couldn't get into it
- You're a very small fraction of the audience, it shouldn't be surprising they focus on the majority who prefer online play as it adds a social element into an otherwise predictable and static environment.
Really? I thought the story was incredibly bland, and I had to force myself to finish it just to stop the nagging feeling that I'm missing something.

Michael - just a terrible, controlling person; I don't want him to get rich, I want him to get killed by the people I'm forced to get him to escape from

Trevor - kind of interesting, but without getting more into his backstory (e.g. how did he become like that), he's just a sociopath

Franklin - most interesting since he has that entrepreneur drive, but once you get the house, he just kinda hangs out in his swimming pool/mansion, and doesn't do anything proactive; basically, he just kinda gives up on his dreams once he makes it big

For plot, it's basically the same as other GTAs:

Do small time illegal stuff

Try something bigger - get busted (usually someone betrays you)

Work for FIB to out mutual opponents

Do the big thing and fight it out with the FIB

There are lots of opportunities to make the story truly interesting, but they didn't do it. For example:

Trevor - would've loved to see something like SA's turf warfare as he breaks into the SA drug scene; also would've looked to see some backstory and how he became so crazy

Franklin - should've started a dealership reselling stolen cars; maybe use it as a front for Lamar's gang desires - I'd love an option to do turf warfare between Trevor and Franklin

Michael - not that interesting, he should have been a supporting character

But no, the story left me disappointed.
- I guess you have some points. FWIW, main characters are thugs, of course you're not supposed to like them. The only character that is sorta likeable is Franklin, Trevor is too odd for me and Michael and his family are annoying AF. But I do like the way it was written and the humorous / epic moments. It could have been better yeah but I've played through it a few times now and it's always been enjoyable.
  
  Compared to 4 which I replayed recently and was pretty bored halfway through.

wow gta 6 is going to be total trash, isn't it

Most likely just like 5, the base game gonna be okay to awesome but it will be devoid of content post storyline in offline mode, it'll be filled up by online-only content.
Not likely, R* haven't released a bad (original) game in a long ass time.

Will it be abandoned as a Single-Player experience for the inline aspect? Probably
- IDK, GTA V bordered on "bad" for me and ended up just being "meh." It got a lot of praise, so I kept going back to it thinking I missed something, and ended up forcing myself to finish it. It was pretty bland story- and character-wise start to finish, side content was mediocre, and the gameplay was fun but not particularly unique (felt like SA gameplay with better graphics).
  
  If GTA VI is just GTA V with better graphics and not much else, I'll probably pass. It'll probably be successful regardless though for the same reason people keep buying Bethesda games. I want an interesting story where I care about the protagonists (def the case in IV and SA), interesting twists and turns, and something new gameplay-wise (e.g. I loved the gang warfare in SA and more realistic driving in IV). Switching between characters isn't "new gameplay" imo, especially if I don't care much about any of them.
And still gonna sell by millions.

We know. It sucks.

And this is why I’m afraid the series going forward is dead. Why would they do anything other than the bare minimum on VI to get it to sell so that they can then start milking the online cash cow again.

When your core audience are a bunch of 13 year old kids, you don’t really need to worry much about story. Just give them rocket powered cars and floating pipes in the sky and watch the cash roll in.

Plus the ability to grief constantly
They could have done this many GTAs ago, but they still gave plenty of great stories.

GTA IV had some of the best dlc ever. GTA V had shark cards.

Yeah between the biker gang and ballad of gay Tony, they had some great dlc for 4. I bought GTA 5 a second time for the PC after awhile but can't expect a good dlc these days from them unfortunately. Hopefully their main story holds up but I'm not holding my breath given their online cash cow.

Could've told you that 10 years ago. Literally the moment online came out and they suddenly they stopped talking about story DLCs, I knew we weren't getting them.

The story-mode campaign is now just a gateway drug to their online cash-cow - I bet you it'll be the same for GTA 6

How much you wanna bet the online portion of GTA6 is gonna be like a "story mode lite" kinda like in 5?
I'm pretty sure there were reports about this shortly after GTA Online's relaunch, that they had moved everyone from DLCs to fix Online.

This was not exactly subtle anyway - oh, they just happened to stop making DLCs just as they discovered their horrible online platform could print cash with close to zero effort.

This is also why RDR2 didn't get its own Undead Nightmare

The worst part is, I played GTA Online and it.. totally sucks.

:O

welll… no shit…