So long, Red Dead Online, we will miss you…well, the three of us that actually played it. With Grand Theft Auto 6’s release coming soon, Rockstar have just diverted all of their resources to its development, thus leaving Red Dead Online without developer support or new content.
The death of Red Dead online was always destined to come sooner or later, even with the ramping up of development on GTA 6 for a 2024 release date. However, the relative failure of Red Dead Online, compared to GTA Online, has sped up that fate.
The base game of Red Dead Redemption 2 will go down as one of the greatest stories ever told in video gaming history, and the open-world nature that allowed said story to flourish will also be remembered as one of the best open-world ever created in the medium.
Unfortunately, its online counterpart will not.
This open-world and story could not save Red Dead online for three reasons: A) The Wild West world of Red Dead Redemption does not translate well to MMO play (though, I’m not even sure I can call Red Dead Online an MMO; it’s really more like a Small Multiplayer Online (SMO)), B) The player characters could never live up to the story ones, especially when the characters were mutes, C) RDO could not supplant GTA Online
Unlike GTA Online’s setting, the modern, California-esque state of San Andreas, Red Dead Online’s Wild West setting was too vast and too sparsely populated to be interesting enough for players to continually roam without the need for new content on a frequent basis. Essentially, the world became ‘boring’ after a while.
Moreover, the mute characters that are so synonymous with Rockstar’s online elements, were extremely boring and clunky to use, especially when they had to talk to characters who could speak. If you don’t believe me, watch some of the cut scenes when the player character enters the home of one of the story characters.
Nevertheless, the biggest reason why Red Dead Online failed is that Rockstar never put in the effort for it to succeed.
GTA Online, the online accessory to GTA 5 (released in 2013), was still widely played by millions when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out in 2019.
As of today, there is approximately 85-100K concurrent Steam players on GTA Online each day, which translates to around 2.5-3M players a month. Try comparing that to RDO’s 2022 (Jan 1st-today) grand total of 18, 378 players that played the game.
Yeah, it’s not much of a contest.
(Rockstar Games-Red Dead Redemption 2-Trailer)
The huge, continued success of GTA Online diverted much of Rockstar’s attention into providing new batches of content for GTA Online players at the expense of RDO, even during the height of Red Dead Redemption 2’s popularity.
Simply put, RDO never stood a chance to overtake GTAO in Rockstar’s mind.
And why would it? Why would Rockstar cater to an online community that averaged around 1,500 players in August 2022 (Red Dead Online) versus a community that averaged 118,000 players in August 2022 (Grand Theft Auto Online)?
I know I wouldn’t.
And that’s why, with this latest (and probably last) release of new content for Red Dead Online, Rockstar have added a ‘thank you’ message saying, “Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who has helped create Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online.”
Red Dead Online is officially dead, with no chance of redemption.
Funnily enough, GTA Online may also be facing the same fate as Rockstar have also released a similar ‘thank you’ message with the latest batch of GTA Online content.
GTA 6 development is really in full swing now if Rockstar is thinking about ending GTA Online too.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Rockstar Games) (Red Dead Redemption 2 Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Rockstar Games) (Red Dead Redemption 2 Trailer – YouTube)
