Red Dead Redemption 2 Hasn’t Quite Redeemed Itself With Steam Launch

Red Dead Redemption 2 is off to a shaky start on Steam, but it can still turn things around.

Red Dead Redemption 2 launched on Steam yesterday, but it hasn’t all be cattle rustling and refried beans. After a rough launch last month on the Epic Game Store, which saw many players unable to run the game or be affected by performance problems, many hoped the Steam release would be smoother. Well, sorry partner, this particular horse is still a bit lame—but you don’t need to shoot it just yet.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is currently sitting with mixed reviews on Steam, mainly driven by those same issues that affected PC players last month. According to a user on the ResetEra forum, the game peaked with a paltry 12,000 concurrent users on its first day, which is surprisingly low for what is, all things considered, an excellent and much-lauded game.

While many games might be pulled apart over features, story, and gameplay, Rockstar’s Western is in a strange position because, at this point, everyone knows it’s a good game. What is weighing it down appears to be a shoddy PC port, and a Rockstar Launcher that is causing lots of headaches.

It is also hard to point to the 12,000 concurrent users as evidence of low sales, as the game has already been out on PC for over a month. Many people could have been convinced to delay their purchase and wait for the game to appear on Steam, but I imagine those same people might be a bit shy to pull the trigger, given the well-known launch issues. There is some good news for Rockstar, however, as the concurrent player count has risen to 27,000 today. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether these are new sales, or just people who purchased the game yesterday finally being able to log on.

Rockstar has done a lot of work since launch to get all their horses hitched, but it’s undoubtedly disheartening for anyone who purchased the game on Steam to be affected by similar issues to those that affect gamers last month. Hopefully it won’t take long for Rockstar to get things a bit more (ahem) stable.