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Rockstar Devs Were Convinced GTA Online Would Flop — “We Are In So Much Trouble”

Before it became the revenue engine that swallowed Rockstar whole, GTA Online was the project nobody believed in — including the people building it. In a new interview, a former Rockstar developer has revealed that the studio was internally convinced the multiplayer mode would fail, with QA testers warning that the entire online offering amounted to just four hours of content at launch. “We were all positive it was going to fail,” he remembers. “Everyone thought this thing was going to fail.”

Thirteen years and billions of dollars later, that anxiety reads like folklore. But it’s a useful reminder that the most profitable entertainment product ever made started life as what one of its own developers calls “an afterthought” — and it tells us something important about how Rockstar is thinking about GTA 6’s online future, too.

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What Happened: The Interview That Rewound the Clock

The revelations come from Matt Freedman, a former Rockstar Games designer whose credits include GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Max Payne 3. Speaking to gaming marketplace Eldorado in an interview published this week and covered by IGN and Insider Gaming, Freedman looked back at the commercial performance of GTA 5 — still one of the best-selling games of all time — and was blunt about where the credit belongs.

“When we were working on GTA Online, it was an afterthought. 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.’ 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.” — Matt Freedman, former Rockstar Games designer

Freedman, who says he put minimal work into GTA Online himself but was close enough to the project to gauge the room, added that GTA 5’s success is “way more… much bigger than I think anyone was expecting” — and that “as much as I’d love to say I was a big part of that, I think it’s all GTA Online.”

Context: The Launch That Almost Wasn’t

For anyone who wasn’t around for it: GTA Online launched on October 1, 2013, a month after GTA 5 itself, and it was rough. The mode was buggy and unstable, network problems kept players out for days, and the content on offer was thin — exactly as those QA testers had warned. There wasn’t much to do beyond sandbox mayhem, and the most exciting content, like the heists that would come to define the mode, didn’t arrive until years later.

Rockstar’s response is now the stuff of legend. Rather than cut losses, the studio “fast-followed” with as much content as it could, as Freedman puts it — and just kept it going, for more than a decade. That pivot had a cost: Rockstar had plans for GTA 5 single-player DLC that were scrapped once GTA Online took off and demanded the studio’s full attention, with the team simultaneously building Red Dead Redemption 2. The bet paid off beyond anyone’s model — and far beyond Freedman’s “four hours of trouble” worst case.

By the Numbers: What the “Failure” Became

The scale of what GTA Online turned into is worth spelling out, because it explains why investors now chase “a GTA Online of their own” — the exact phrase Freedman uses when describing what the industry learned from it. GTA 5 crossed $1 billion in retail sales within three days of launch in September 2013, faster than any entertainment product before it, and has gone on to sell more than 200 million copies — numbers that put it among the best-selling games ever made, with Freedman arguing the tail of that curve “is all GTA Online.”

And the mode is not some nostalgia product coasting on fumes. Thirteen years after those QA testers counted four hours of content, GTA Online is still shipping headline-sized updates — the Kortz Center Heist lands next week, complete with its own crop of Rockstar-referencing easter eggs for fans to dig through. Most games don’t get thirteen weeks of post-launch support. GTA Online got thirteen years and counting, all born from a mode the room expected to quietly die.

Vice City streets and skyline in GTA 6, the setting for the next chapter of GTA Online — GTA Online’s next home: Vice City, state of Leonida. Image: Rockstar Games

What This Means for GTA 6

The most interesting part of Freedman’s interview isn’t the nostalgia — it’s the forward look. He’s fascinated to see what Rockstar does with GTA 6 Online, and he frames the challenge in a way only an insider can:

“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.” — Matt Freedman

That’s a genuinely sharp observation, and it lands at a moment when the whole industry is publicly rethinking the live-service model. Rockstar, for its part, has been deliberately conservative about committing to anything. The company has confirmed GTA 6 will launch as a single-player experience, with online plans left conspicuously vague. Meanwhile the current GTA Online is still receiving major updates 13 years in, and Rockstar just launched its official NoPixel V roleplay server for GTA 5 on PC — a move that signals surprising openness to community-driven play. For the full picture of what happens to the current game — and the three realistic paths forward — read our deep dive on GTA 6 Online: the $1.3-million-a-day question.

Downtown Vice City in GTA 6 with neon signage — Rockstar has kept GTA 6’s online plans deliberately vague — the campaign is the launch priority. Image: Rockstar Games

There’s also a lesson in the 2013 story for anyone worried GTA 6 might launch light. The studio that once shipped a four-hour online mode and turned it into a decade-long phenomenon has had 13 years to study what worked. If GTA 6 Online opens small, history says Rockstar will build fast — the “fast follow” muscle is well trained at this point. And if you need your Vice City fix before November 19, the classic playground is still open: GTA 5 Premium Edition includes GTA Online and all its years of content — a cheap way to binge the heists before Leonida opens for business.

The Bottom Line

One former developer’s memory adds up to a neat moral: the most successful thing Rockstar ever built was the thing it expected to fail. QA said four hours of content. Investors today hunt for “the next GTA Online.” Nobody at the studio in 2013 was confident — and it became a phenomenon anyway. With GTA 6 launching November 19, 2026 as a single-player experience and the online question left open, the healthiest reading of history is this: whatever Rockstar ships for multiplayer in Leonida, underestimate it at your peril.

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