Red Dead Online fans are mourning the game today after a year went by without a major update and Rockstar developers confirmed that they had changed the focus.
Red Dead Online was to be a follow-up to Rockstar’s incredibly successful GTA Online, giving them two online worlds that would feed non-stop new content and fun to players in exchange for lots of cash. Things did not go as planned.
For whatever reason, Rockstar simply hasn’t given Red Dead Online the same attention that GTA Online has received and continues to receive. Fans lament this fact today with the hashtag #RedDeadFuneral as they “celebrate” a year since the last major update.
There’s a bit of rage out there, with fans saying the game was abandoned by Rockstar out of “greed” and had “untapped potential”.
“RDO was a game with great potential, but the rock star decided to ruin it all,” one tweet says.
“It’s a shame that Rockstar would rather milk a game that came out in 2013 to death than their new game which is really fun,” says another, referring to GTA5 and its online mode.
There are hundreds more complaints, with thousands of tweets on the label, which has come into trend in the gaming category. Despite the complaints, there are reasons as far as Rockstar is concerned here, beyond particularly annoying this group of people.
GTA is a more popular franchise: it always has been, probably always will be. Partly because of age and respect, partly because of higher budgets and more games, partly because of the ease of play, the appeal of its environment and the tone for younger audiences, and some key, high-quality games. .
GTA Online itself also has an extremely large community, especially on Twitch thanks to the various role-playing game servers that have grown massively in popularity over the past few years. RDO has similar ones, of course, but being the second best product from the same company will never go well in the current climate.
There is also the constant presence of Grand Theft Auto 6, if it ever shows up. This will double the interest and demand for GTA Online, which you can safely assume will be integrated in some way into the new game. RDO will starve to death in these conditions, no matter how much Rockstar wants to feed the two children, in fact, Rockstar said recently.
Still, this is of little joy to those who enjoy cowboys over fast cars and the wild west over vast cityscapes. There were 6 years between Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption, then 8 between that and its sequel. Maybe by 2028 they will have a third game.
Written by GLHF.