Game News Red Dead Online: With GTA 6, the game considered “dead” by Rockstar fans! Why ?
Published on 07/16/2022 at 17:35
While Rockstar Games formalized the development of Grand Theft Auto 6 a few months ago, Red Dead Online is the scene of strange images. The players take the stage to lament the “death” of the game. Why? What is the next GTA involved with? Follow the leader !
Outlaws, dressed in black, kneel in front of a grave. “Thank you for these good times” writes a surfer, on Twitter, when another says “since 2018 you have made us dream, 2022 you give us regret”. On the hashtag RedDeadFuneralplayers lament the “death” of Red Dead Online, the online dimension of Red Dead Redemption 2. Last week, its developer Rockstar Games has announcement put an end to “major content updates”, often articulated around themes (Moonshiners, Naturalist, Blood Money). Content additions that notably introduced new scripted missions and new roles, the equivalent of character classes. In the future, Red Dead Online will therefore have to make do with “improvements” and “special seasonal events”. For players, the Wild West is coming to an end.
Red Dead is dead ?
The discontent of video game cowboys is not new. In response to our Twitter post, fans say they were disappointed with the July 2021 update – while the site Gameranx already spotted dissatisfaction a year earlier. The story has in any case taken a new dimension beginning of this year, while another hashtag, SaveRedDeadOnline, brings together the crowds on the famous social network. At the time, our article noted the following quote: “It’s been two years without any sense from Rockstar. They don’t care, the support and love for Red Dead 2 is gone. That’s it for Grand Theft Auto V from now on!” Players then hope for other quality in-game content and Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two (company that owns Rockstar Games) Explain “hear the frustration” of Internet users. Content that will unfortunately never arrive.
What promises have not been kept (for Red Dead Online, editor’s note)? Frankly, all of them. It’s the worst online Rockstar has ever run. Money management etc was abysmal. The smallest purchase required hours and hours of farming. And the content SINCE its release is ridiculous – The player “Aredi”, following our message on Twitter
Yes, because there is another elephant in the room: Grand Theft Auto, whose fifth installment GTA 5 remains to this day the second best-selling game of all time – 165 million copies worldwide since 2013 on three generations of consoles – making the heyday of the studio and its parent company. On the sidelines of the solo adventure, it is especially to the online dimension of the title that we owe this tremendous longevity. Over seven years of existence, GTA Online, a true “game within the game”, has chained successful updates, allowing players to create criminal organizations, take part in wacky urban races, without forgetting the robberies and the addition of new scripted missions. An example of its kind, comparable to the power of Fortniteand which “transformed the business of Rockstar” according to Strauss Zelnick in a interview of 2017.
GTA 6 in the viewfinder
Obviously, when you find such an efficient economic model, you won’t soon forget it. It’s obvious: the new episode of the franchise, Grand Theft Auto 6, will also put the package on the online dimension (Rockstar has not yet specified anything on this subject). A component that undoubtedly mobilizes today all studio resources and of which Red Dead Online – but also GTA Online to a lesser extent – is the first victim. To justify stopping major new content in the Wild West online, Rockstar writes on its blog that it has “assigned a large part of its team to the development of the next opus of Grand Theft Auto”. As a reminder, the development of Red Dead Redemption 2 had requested more than 3.000 people !
Red Dead Redemption therefore finds itself as the great sacrifice of studios and companies with crazy ambitions that have the look “future-oriented”, as Kotaku claims. On Twitter, two camps are emerging: those enthusiastic about the idea that GTA 6 is now Rockstar’s number one priority; those who raise a waste in view of the potential from Red Dead Online. A potential that Dan Houser – co-founder of the studio which left the ship in 2020 – considered comparable to GTA. “We want (Red Dead Online, editor’s note) to be as robust as Grand Theft Auto Online, as soon as it has taken its marks artistically” he explains during a interviewgranted in 2018.
At the beginning, (for Red Dead Online, editor’s note) they had promised a slow, completely coherent evolution of our character as the game pushes us to take our time (…) There was so much potential, professions, activities” – The player “NiamoR”, following our message on Twitter
Repeat the feat
The rest of the story you know. Interestingly, though, Strauss Zelnick has often been wise about the GTA 5 | Red Dead Redemption 2. “It’s hard to expect something as successful as the most profitable cultural product of all time” he said in July 2018, a few months before the release of the second episode in the Far West. “I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation! Our hope, as well as our belief, is that Red Dead Redemption 2 is an extraordinary creative product and that it will be excellent”. The sequel will prove him right, even if more for the solo adventure than for the multiplayer. Today Red Dead Redemption 2 has sold 43 million units and Take Two thinks “satisfied” of online success.
Of course, the goal of Grand Theft Auto 6 is for all facets to be validated by the press and the players. But how can you imagine a success as resounding as the fifth part? The saying of Strauss Zelnick also applies here: difficult to do better than the one who has already won everything, especially after the controversies over the remaster Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition that tarnished Rockstar’s reputation. What is certain, however, is that the studio and Take Two will do everything to touch the records of GTA 5. Even if it means putting aside a great adventure in the Wild West.