Former GTA producer: Rockstar scrapped 'entire levels', 'fully finished minigames' from Grand Theft Auto V

According to John Ricchio, former lead producer of Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V), Rockstar Games decided to cut so much content from the game that nearly entire levels, along with numerous minigames, were scrapped.

While GTA V gave players random encounters, activities, exploration, and side content to keep them engaged for hundreds of hours, behind the scenes, the studio had to make some tough choices about what made it into the final game. Unfortunately, Rockstar Games ended up cutting content that was nearly finished just to maintain the game’s polish at a consistently high standard.

John Ricchio recently sat down for an interview with Kiwi Talkz and shared deep insights into the development of Grand Theft Auto V as GTA 6 approaches its release on 19 November 2026.

In the interview, Ricchio was shocked as he reminisced about how much content was cut from Grand Theft Auto V’s final build that couldn’t make the cut, as different development teams were getting burnt out from working on content that sadly couldn’t meet the level of finesse Rockstar Games demanded. Ricchio lamented:

“There was so much stuff in GTA, particularly in GTA 5. Oh my god, there was so much stuff that was done. Like minigames that were completely done and ready to go, except for, like, animation, right?”

The cuts were necessary because “the animation team were getting destroyed, and there was so much animation work to do to bring everything to the same level.” GTA V was already packing 60 random encounters, 20 Strangers and Freaks missions with further arcs, and nearly 42 minigames, and was practically huge at that point.

Some minigames "just disappeared"

He stated that “we had to cut stuff that was otherwise completely done.” Furthermore, he said that leads at Rockstar would “throw out entire levels and they’ll throw out entire things because they don’t have enough resources to get everything to the same level.”

So many minigames “weren’t like they went into DLC or anything… They just disappeared.” It’s pretty common in massive projects for content to end up on the chopping block. Ricchio stated, “Every decision can’t be made by everyone.”

It’s quite possible that many cut activities and side content could make it into Grand Theft Auto VI, provided they use the same tech.

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