EXCLUSIVE: Why Was Midnight Club 5 Canceled By Rockstar?

From 2000 to 2009, RockStar wasn’t just known for Grand Theft Auto. The company was also heavily into the arcade racing genre with the Midnight Club series.

First released in 2000 with the original Midnight Club: Street Racing on PlayStation 2, the series focused on street racing throughout various city environments. The game received a positive reception right from launch, spawning a series that included four total games over nine years. But there could’ve been five if it hadn’t been for Rockstar Games looking down on the franchise.

Midnight Club 5 Was In Development

Speaking with Kiwi Talkz on Insider Gaming, former Rockstar senior designer Kris Roberts, who worked on the Midnight Club series along with Red Dead Redemption’s multiplayer, gave insight into what happened with the franchise and why a fifth game never happened.

“When I [left], the core Midnight Club team continued to develop,” Roberts said. “I think they had even had some prototype cities; I kind of recall London was the one they were doing map development and stuff for. There was effort, and they were starting, and they were starting Midnight Club 5, or whatever they were going to call it, but it didn’t last, and it was canceled”

Roberts said that part of the reason it was canceled was due to “non-trivial conflict” between Rockstar New York and the Midnight Club team in San Diego. He said that a part of the conflict was legitimate, as multiple deadlines were missed during the development of Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Missing deadlines and falling behind schedule, especially in the pre-digital distribution days of gaming, often had potentially massive financial consequences. But it wasn’t just what happened with past games that Roberts believes was a factor in the game’s cancelation.

“I think that might have been the core of it, but it was also creative control,” he said. “The team in San Diego kind of…we felt, in any other studio environment, Midnight Club was a solid game.”

Roberts pointed to the fact that, while competing with other racing titles like Need for Speed and Burnout, the game was successful and data showed players kept playing longer than the competing games. But that wasn’t enough.

“The perception was we never got the accolades or the reception,” Roberts explained. “The New York perspective was, ‘You’re not GTA’. When you’re the red-headed stepchild project—you know, we’re doing a good job, we’re world-class, but we’re still treated less than. It was challenging.”

After Midnight Club 5 was canceled, Roberts said that the team was dismantled. Some, he said, transitioned to working on the company’s RAGE game engine or on Red Dead Redemption. The rest, however, were let go.

“When they cancelled it, it was pretty clear that there would be no more Midnight Club and everything was going to be GTA and stuff moving forward, and that’s just the way it was going to be,” he said.

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