What caused this though? I don’t really keep up with Rockstar honestly.
Take2, they crunched their employees to the brink most of their top developers started leaving and posting bad reviews for working at R*. I saw a few, most of them say same. The work environment and employees are cool, but it's upper management making them work overtime (some without extra pay) to make a game. Then when a game finally launches we get RDR2 Online with bugs, easy hacks and coding that is exactly the same as GTA's (to save time) because Take2 wanted a 10 year game to be released.
I think Dan felt responsible for his employees. Imagine making a company and low and behold a big investor takes the fun from your sails and lifetime friends who quit your company over corporate bs.
I remember the interview with R*, they said they wanted to even hold back RDR2 a year from 2018 release because they were still adding more to the game campaign wise. Which is clear since program files in PC version have Mexico completely fucking re-rendered. Blender files were de-encrypted from base game showing all of Mexico's buildings. And I glitched over into Mexico not just on campaign but online as well, so I can tell you they had plans. Not to mention... even though most people don't know this R* made RDR2 map huge. And no, not the base game map THE OUTSIDE MAP...
This is essentially RDR2 on every server online. You have the base game map, then you have what I call "No Man's Land". If you start off with glitch next to Gaptooth Reach you can ride the entire white area... It's full of terrain ride-able if you go north with animal spawns that just stand and don't move even when they should be spooked. Then if you go south there's a a hidden sea that allows you to cross into Mexico where it is fully rendered as just terrain. You see roads, landmarks, etc. Then you see a bit of palm trees because they built Guarma behind Mexico. But to get to Guarma you have not cross the hidden sea and then go around mountains further beyond Mexico to the south then go north on flat terrain till you fall into Guarma.
The map is huge, to the point I have no idea why. I have screenshots on my ps4 of this.