former rockstar dev says the team was terrified before gta online launched

Saw this interview clip making the rounds and it's one of those things that makes you realize how close GTA Online came to being a disaster. A former Rockstar designer apparently said the team was genuinely scared before the mode went live, with someone on the inside saying

"we are in so much trouble"

right around launch.

Anyone who was there for October 2013 remembers what actually happened. Servers buckling, characters getting wiped, people stuck in loading screens for hours. It took weeks before things stabilized, and even then the economy was a mess. So hearing that the devs knew it was going to be rough isn't exactly shocking, but it's different coming from someone who was in the room.

What gets me is how that fear probably shaped everything after. GTA Online became this massive money printer, but the early days were held together with duct tape. Rockstar had never done a live service like that before, and it showed. Now we're sitting here waiting for GTA 6's online component, which is supposed to be even bigger. If they were scared about GTA Online in 2013, imagine the pressure now with a decade of expectations and a player base that's already spent billions in the current version.

I don't know if this interview has more details about what specifically they were worried about, but the quote alone is enough to start a conversation. Were they scared about the tech, the monetization, or just the sheer scale? GTA Online launched with almost nothing to do compared to today, and it still broke. GTA 6 online is going to have to hit the ground running or people will riot.

Do you think Rockstar has the same kind of internal panic about GTA 6's online mode right now?

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Source: Insider Gaming · Curated content.

I was there day one in 2013. Made my guy, got through the tutorial race with Lamar, then the game just ate him. Character gone, cloud servers down, me staring at that loading spinner like it owed me money. Think it was almost two weeks before anything stuck.

Of course they were scared. Rockstar had never run anything live before that. You shipped a disc and if it spun up in your PS2, transaction over. Vice City didn't have servers to buckle. Whole different world back then.

The part I push back on is "people will riot" if 6's online stumbles out the gate. They won't. They'll scream for a month and log in anyway, because where else are they going. 2013 taught Rockstar the opposite lesson, that a broken launch costs them nothing if they patch it eventually. That's the part that should worry us more than any internal panic.