Red Dead Online's popularity has dwindled in the last couple of years. However, 2021's summer update promises major changes that are intended to draw disenchanted players back to the game. Rockstar Games had been teasing this update for months but it is finally coming to fruition.
It's something that fans of the franchise had been clamoring for since Red Dead Online went from being a mode in Red Dead Redemption 2 to its own standalone MMO: the unlawful activities of robbing camps and homesteads for cash and loot that were a part of the main game.
Red Dead Online Decline
The intention of the update is to reinvigorate what had become a progressive problem of player population decline since 2019. Part of the reason was, ironically, becoming a standalone MMO in late 2020 for Windows PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One, and more recent consoles through backward compatibility of the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X.
This is because the jump from Red Dead Redemption 2 forced some players who started on Playstation 4 and Xbox One platforms to choose to lose much of what they had already accumulated from hours of playing in order to start fresh on the Windows PC. While many players made the choice due to the more options and flexibility available, it also meant sacrificing a lot of time and content that they had already gotten used to having.
In addition, the existing Red Dead Online player community had been starving for actual new content. Although Rockstar Games had been adding new content sporadically which coincided with updates for Grand Theft Auto Online such as solo missions and new race courses, they have not been enough to keep some players interested. Aim to Misbehave One of the activities noticeably absent from Red Dead Online that Red Dead Redemption 2 prominently featured is the ability to do robberies and other forms of mischief as cowboys in the Old West. This was a curious removal, as a big part of the history and appeal of the cowboy and Wild West genre is the conflict between the lawmen and the outlaws in that frontier.