Years after launching and spinning-off from the main Grand Theft Auto 5 title, GTA Online has thoroughly surpassed its predecessor in nearly every respect, with Rockstar Games’ continually-growing world offering a steady rollout of activities and loot for its immense multiplayer community. Last month’s arrival of The Cayo Perico Heist was touted as the biggest update yet for the game, debuting a tuneful new nightclub scene as well as allowing players to easily enter the heist as a one-person team. As the online mode is often driven by team-based gameplay, this solo-adjacent inclusion represented a rarity for GTA Online and it appears this only marks the beginning of more single-player content to come.

In a new interview with GQ, Rockstar design director Scott Butchard talked about the challenges behind making The Cayo Perico Heist and what the future holds regarding the future of GTA Online. Commenting on the update’s solo aspect, Butchard acknowledged the GTA community “has been vocal” about single-player content and this new island locale offered a chance to finally add something substantial to the game.”It’s something we’re keen to carry forward,” Butchard said. “We want to respect teams and players who want to play co-op. But at the same time still allow solo players to still get just as valid an experience out of it.”

There’s perks to both. If you go in there by yourself, you’re taking 100 per cent of the cut and it’s a lot easier to do stealth and plan when you’re not on comms. With multiple players you can split up and do multiple things at once. You can take more of the secondary objectives, so I could send Tarek off to the control tower to take down air defences while I start looting from the wee cash piles.”

The renewed prominence of single-player content in GTA Online comes after Rockstar has dedicated significant resources to multiplayer content, with any and all solo expansions effectively falling by the wayside. In the case of last year’s Diamond Casino Heist, evidence shows the DLC was initially supposed to debut in GTA 5 as a standalone adventure but the content was repurposed into a multiplayer experience somewhere along the way. While Rockstar will continue its immense dedication to GTA Online and the recently-standalone Red Dead Online, Butchard concluded by assuring the studio plans to include more solo content amidst all the multiplayer – at least until Grand Theft Auto 6 eventually gets off the ground.

I think you can see that with Online and I think going forward we’re going to inject more of that single-player element in there,”

Grand Theft Auto Online is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

What do you think? Are you glad to see more single-player content coming to GTA Online, or would you rather Rockstar simply focused on GTA 6 for the time being? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter and Facebook to be informed of the latest gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! For more headlines recently featured on DFTG, check out these next few news stories:

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