Red Dead Online gets a farewell from fans with the trending hashtag #RedDeadFuneral

Red Dead Online fans are mourning the game today after a year passed without a major update and developers Rockstar confirmed they’d switched focus away from it.

Red Dead Online was supposed to be the cowboy follow-up to Rockstar’s unbelievably successful GTA Online, giving them two online worlds that would endlessly feed new content and fun to players in return for lots and lots of cash. Things did not go to plan.

For whatever reason, Rockstar simply hasn‘t given Red Dead Online the same amount of attention as GTA Online got and continues to receive. Fans are mourning that fact today with the hashtag #RedDeadFuneral as they ‘celebrate’ one year since the last major update.

There’s quite a bit of anger out there, with fans saying the game was abandoned by Rockstar out of “greed” and had “wasted potential.”

“RDO was a game with great potential but rockstar decided to ruin it all” reads one tweet.

“It sucks that Rockstar would rather milk a game that came out in 2013 to death than milk their newest game that’s actually fun” says another, referencing GTA5 and its Online mode.

There are hundreds more complaints, with thousands of tweets on the hashtag, which has reached trending in the gaming category. Despite the complaints, there are reasons for what Rockstar is doing here, beyond annoying this group of people particularly.

GTA is a more popular franchise – always has been, likely always will be. Partly due to age and respect, partly due to higher budgets and more games, partly due to ease of play, the appeal of its setting and tone to younger audiences, and some key, high-quality games.

GTA Online itself also has an extremely large community, particularly on Twitch thanks to the various role-play servers that massively grew in popularity over the past few years. RDO has similar, of course, but being second-best to another product in the same company is never going to go well in the current climate.

There’s also the ever-looming presence of Grand Theft Auto 6, should it ever show up. That is going to redouble interest and demand in GTA Online, which you can safely assume will be integrated into the new game in some fashion. RDO is going to starve in those conditions no matter how much Rockstar might want to give both its children some food – indeed, Rockstar said as much recently.

Still, that’s of little joy to those who enjoy cowboys over fast cars and the wild west over sprawling cityscapes. There was 6 years between Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption, then 8 between that and its sequel. Maybe around 2028 they’ll get a third game.

Written by GLHF.