Almost 17 years ago, Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto 4: The Lost and Damned, effectively hinting at a direction of prolonged support for the offline components of their future games. This direction would roughly last a whopping one and a half games — Red Dead Redemption, with the release of Undead Nightmare, and two canceled story expansions for GTA 5.

Many will blame this change of heart on the industry-shaking success of GTA: Online. Others will attribute it to Rockstar’s management choosing to allocate most resources for developing their next big project, namely Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 6. Nonetheless, recent reports seem to indirectly indicate that GTA 6’s story mode may not become a barren land of wasted opportunities.

Rockstar’s outreach to content creators

The Fortnite influence persists!

On February 17th, Digiday reported that Rockstar had been quietly reaching out to content creators from popular live-service games, namely Fortnite and Roblox. These creators utilize in-game content creation tools, like Fortnite's Creative mode, to create custom experiences that are often irrelevant to the original game. Wouldn't it be fun if you could play Pokémon in Fortnite?

While Rockstar declined to confirm the purpose of these collaborations, it’s widely speculated that they’re looking to incorporate some form of content creation tools into the online component of GTA 6. With Rockstar’s acquisition of Cfx.re, the team behind FiveM and RedM, it’s not unrealistic to think that this user-generated content will take a more prominent, yet not exclusive, role in SixM or Project ROME as it is allegedly called right now.

User-generated content was present in GTA: Online as players could create jobs or activities, but these are poorly platformed — you have to be a Social Club friend with the map creator to play their jobs. However, TezFunz, a popular Rockstar data miner, suggested in a year-old post on X that Rockstar was working on a public version of the mission creator. This revelation comes after the addition of an empty script file with the name “public_mission_creator.”

In retrospect, GTA: Online seems to have been used as a testing ground for this script, but it wasn’t meant to be a fully fledged feature. Instead, it was probably meant to roll out for GTA 6’s online.

How user-generated content could help Rockstar

Labor is an extremely valuable resource

These efforts from Rockstar translate as an attempt to launch the online component with a sackful of content to play, unlike GTA: Online’s rather barebones initial release in 2013. It’s a new approach that would free up some resources, primarily valuable labor, that would’ve gone to maintaining and rolling out new content for online. Are you following yet?

As I briefly mentioned before, one of the biggest criticisms of GTA: Online was that it effectively replaced story expansions. While online introduced new vehicles, weapons, and activities, it lacked the narrative depth and character development that made GTA 4’s DLC so iconic. With UGC tools potentially taking some of the pressure off developers, Rockstar could finally return to crafting the kind of story-centered content that the community has been eager to see for almost 13 years.

Let’s connect a few more dots. Tom Henderson, a credible industry insider, claimed in a four-year-old video that GTA 6 will feature an evolving map, again, akin to Fortnite. The evolving map rumor would go on to be corroborated by Jason Schreier and later included in his Bloomberg report on Rockstar Games’ efforts in improving its work environment:

“Rockstar’s plan is now to continually update the game over time, adding new missions and cities on a regular basis, which the leadership hopes will lead to less crunch during the game’s final months[...]” -Jason Schreier

The evolving map is most likely a feature tied to the online component, but it’s still not completely ruled out story mode; as Schreier’s report says, Rockstar is planning to add entire cities. It would be hard to imagine multiple cities or towns popping up over time, and it would be even more absurd for the gap between story mode and the online component to be this wide.

Previously, Rockstar merely replaced buildings. The first thing that comes to mind is the Vinewood Casino, which was later replaced with the Diamond Casino for its own DLC in GTA: Online. The biggest change to the online map was the addition of the Cayo Perico island, but it was locked behind a loading screen. The most that changed with story mode was a few terrain changes between the enhanced and legacy editions of GTA 5. Moreover, constantly implementing big-scale changes in the online component without introducing them to the story mode will render each version barely recognizable to the others.

Story DLC isn’t that bad of an idea, money-wise

While the ghost of canceled story DLCs past still lingers, user-generated content represents a glimmer of hope for the offline fans. I’m certain that Rockstar noticed the online buzz around Michael and Trevors’ canceled DLC and the uproar over Undead Nightmare 2. How they decide to act upon this information is still a matter of speculation.

With Rockstar’s limited yet iconic catalog of story expansions, it’s a non-starter to think they’ll be able to monetize story DLC. What CD Projekt did with The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 was remarkable, but it’s no steep stone for Rockstar and surely not for a title as big as GTA. One thing for sure, however, is that it’ll keep gamers from asking for GTA 7 for a bit longer.