Last week, Rockstar delivered the distressing news that it’s essentially putting Red Dead Online, the MMO version of Red Dead Redemption 2, into maintenance mode in favor of nurturing the far more popular Grand Theft Auto franchise. And pretty much nobody was surprised at all, as Rockstar’s care for the game had already been so minimal that it had prompted major uprisings from the game’s extant community. I believe the word we used earlier this year in our check-in was “neglect.” Ouch.
Sure, content droughts lead to fewer players, which leads to content droughts, which leads to even fewer players, so I understand how things went from bad to worse. What I wanted to discuss today is how it got bad in the first place – and what prompted the start of the downward spiral. I suspect the long delay before it got to PC had a lot to do with it, as did the many design problems that arose in the beta. And I suspect the fact that RDR2 didn’t translate all that well to the MMO space did too; our own writers found it simply boring. And that’s definitely not something you can say about GTAO. GTAO is never boring.
Let’s hash this out because I’m sure our readers have some ideas. Why did Red Dead Online fail?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
