It’s been nearly a year since Red Dead Online’s last major update. The long wait for new content has led to a growing movement among some players to #SaveRedDeadOnline, putting pressure on developer Rockstar using social media and emails. Today, Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive, confirmed that he and his company were aware of all the frustration and assured fans more was planned, but didn’t offer any details or a timeframe for when those updates would come.
Red Dead Online—the multiplayer spin-off of 2018’s Red Dead Redemption II—hasn’t received a new, substantial update since July 2021. That last update, Blood Money, added some new robberies, clothing items, and a slew of short-lived battle passes. Even before that, large updates to Rockstar’s open-world online western game were rare, often separated by many months of nothing but small weekly events where players could earn a bit of extra XP or cash for playing old content, again. Meanwhile, Rockstar’s other ongoing multiplayer game, Grand Theft Auto Online, continues to receive large and small updates at a much more rapid pace. This has led to a tense situation among RDO players, who feel frustrated, ignored, and who believe the game is abandoned like a dead bandit in the desert.
Today, speaking to IGN, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick acknowledged the frustration among RDO players, adding that he was “flattered” by it all.
“I’ve heard the frustration,” said Zelnick. “it’s flattering that [RDO players] want more content, and more will be said by Rockstar in due time.”
After that nothing-burger answer, Zelnick then told IGN that it wasn’t his place to talk about RDO’s future, and instead he would allow Rockstar Games to talk about what updates might be coming down the mountain for the game.
“Rockstar Games talks about the updates that are coming,” Zelnick told IGN. “And we’re working on an awful lot at Rockstar Games.”
Update, 5/16/22, 6:35 p.m. EST: Well, it seems this sort-of-encouraging news was too good to be true. Take-Two sent over a clarification to IGN about its CEO statements regarding the future of RDO, explaining that Zelnick was “solely referring to the online servers” for the game and explained it wasn’t confirming any future content updates are in the works, instead saying Rockstar would get to decide if and when such updates would come to RDO.
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IGN also asked Zelnick if Take-Two and Rockstar Games planned on supporting Red Dead Online for the long-term and he confirmed that was indeed the plan, though again offered no specific details or timetable on when frustrated players could expect any new updates.
While some in the RDO community are just happy to hear that RDO has a future and that their frustration has been noticed, others are (understandably) disappointed that nearly a year after the game’s last update, Rockstar and Take-Two don’t have more to offer.
Yet, even though the game continues to linger around like the last zombie you need to kill before the next wave spawns, Rockstar has never stopped letting folks invest money into Red Dead Online via in-game microtransactions, even as its content drought rapidly approaches its second year.
