‘We Were All Positive It Was Going to Fail’: Rockstar Devs Thought GTA Online Would Flop

A former Rockstar Games developer has revealed that the team thought GTA Online was going to fail before it launched.

In an interview with Eldorado, ex-Rockstar Games developer Matt Freedman looked back on the success of GTA 5 and attributed a lot of it to GTA Online. He noted that a lot of investors seek a GTA Online-level success nowadays, but said it was treated as an “afterthought” during its initial development.

“When we were working on GTA Online, it was an afterthought,” said Freedman. “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 [and saying], ‘We’ve got four hours of content for 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. We’re going to do our best job anyways.’ And then it took off, and then there was, to Rockstar’s credit, a fast follow with as much content as possible and [it] just kind of keep it going. And now it’s become this