Red Dead Redemption 2 just hit a new peak player count as the game continue to sell very well. Rockstar released this western masterpiece over 6 years ago to huge praise and millions of copies sold at launch. Even as time has gone on, the game has seen several surges in popularity from returning players to whole groups of new outlaws.
On January 26th, the game broke its own concurrent player count several times. Since the start of the day, I had been monitoring the count via SteamDB and it just kept climbing. At the time of writing (3:01pm GMT), it has just surpassed 86,717 players. This is almost 10,000 more players than the previous record which was set in November 2023 that we reported on here. After over a year of decline since the previous record, the player base has rapidly grew over 3 days to smash the record. This is only counting Steam players, no consoles or other PC versions.
Why Has This Happened?
A few days ago, Rockstar Games began one of their Publisher Sales on Steam. This is a promotion they usually do a couple of times a year but this one is a little different. They discounted Red Dead Redemption 2 to its lowest ever price on Steam. Typically, these sorts of sales boost sales numbers as we’ve reported on in the past. It broke its own concurrent player count a few times in 2022 and at both ends of 2023.
The game is also playable on Steam Deck and is routinely one of the most played titles on the device. With the handheld PC being such a hit and continuing to sell more, those users are picking up Red Dead 2 for it. With GTA V now unplayable on the Steam Deck due to the new anti-cheat, it lost a lot of players and some of them might have switched to Red Dead for their Rockstar Games fix.
Still Topping Charts
Earlier this month we reported how Red Dead Redemption 2 was the most downloaded PS4 game in the USA and Canada. It usually remains in the top 5, more so the top 3 every month. It had a long term spell at the top of the chart in 2023. Two years on from that with zero big content updates, it is back on top.
Another report we shared this month was how well the game sold in terms of copies in 2024. It was revealed to be the 7th best selling game in all of Europe last year. This is actually up a place from the prior year. All signs for this game show it continuous finds new players even without an update for the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. It sure does ask the question, why not Rockstar? There has even been talk of the game being ported to the Nintendo Switch 2 as a launch title. You can learn more about that here.
It is also worth reminding you that we’re entering the final week of the current Red Dead Online Event Month. If you’d like to know all of what’s going on in RDO right now, check out our guide here.
For more Red Dead Red Redemption 2, Red Dead Online and more news, stay tuned to RockstarINTEL.
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2 Comments
Lel, I was one of the 83k playing yesterday, and didn’t even know till I just read this article. I played for like 8 hours yesterday, clearing out New Austin territory, hunting and doing various tasks and missions as they appeared.
Had no idea the sale caused such an influx. What luck. Just glad to help break it records.
wow