People around the world loved the Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption expansions, so the developers at Rockstar have received a lot of questions about what Grand Theft Auto V would have to offer in terms of future content even before the game launched. The studio didn't exactly make things easier for themselves when they said that we should expect "substantial additions" to the game's story a few months after release either. This has lead to quite a few people holding their breath in anticipation for years in hope of GTA V expansions, and now the studio has finally decided to crush these hopes once and for all, while also explaining why we never got more single-player story for the extremely popular game.
Game Informer has been fortunate enough to get an exclusive Q&A with Rockstar, and the studio has this to say when asked about why they never made single-player expansions for GTA V:
"No, it was not really a conscious decision, it's just what happened. We would love to do more single-player add-ons for games in the future. 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. With GTA V, the single-player game was absolutely massive and very, very complete. It was three games in one."
That sounds fair enough, but it doesn't stop there. "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 realising that potential also sucked up a lot of resources," they continued. "And then there are other games - in particular Red Dead Redemption 2. The combination of these three factors means for this game, we did not feel single-player expansions were either possible or necessary, but we may well do them for future projects. 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. I don't think you could make a game like GTA V if you did not like single-player games and trying to expand their possibilities!"
In short, Rockstar had more than enough on their plate by working on other games, while also supporting GTA Online. Top this with the fact that they already felt the game was "complete", and you have quite a few reasons as to why they changed their plans. Still, the good news is that they don't rule out the possibility of expanding upon the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2, but aren't making any promises either.
How do you feel about their reasoning?