GTA+ feels like last nail in the coffin for Red Dead Online

digitaltrends.com:

It feels like every single headline I’ve seen recently in a story about Rockstar has included Grand Theft Auto Online somehow. With the massively popular multiplayer component of Grand Theft Auto V releasing as a stand-alone game recently, it’s no surprise that Rockstar is going all-in on it. GTA Online has been around since 2013, when GTA V launched. And it didn’t just retain a player base, but grew it larger and larger.

GTA+ is the be-all and end-all of that, the four-carat diamond ring planted on the online game’s finger that says “you’re my forever.” It offers players (specifically those on Xbox Series X/S or PS5) a ton of free rewards, from $500,000 in GTA bucks in their in-game bank accounts to entire properties needed to take part in certain pieces of content.

But what GTA+ tells me about Rockstar’s future commitments isn’t that it’s all about GTA Online; it’s that Red Dead Online is dead in the dust.

Red Dead Online‘s decline has been a slow and painful one, like a ship sinking in slow motion. I’ve always been a big fan of the game, mostly thanks to its atmosphere. Whereas GTA V and GTA Online capture Rockstar’s take on the fake people of Los Angeles with plastic visuals, Red Dead Online bleeds realism. From the grizzled faces of the outlaws I gunned down to the gorgeous sunsets I saw, Red Dead Online always had an iron grip on me.

The game’s content, on the other hand, was paper-thin. Sure, you can sign up for different professions (all of which had to be bought with the game’s premium currency, gold bars), but those quickly got repetitive. You can only slowly drive a carriage packed with pelts so many times before it becomes tiring. Even the game’s latest burst of content, which actually rewarded players for