More people are playing RDR2 today than ever before, but why?

Roughly 48 hours ago, Red Dead Redemption 2 broke its concurrent player count record on Steam by quite a large margin. But why does Rockstar Games’ six-year-old game suddenly have more players than ever?

Thank you in advance to Ed Smith over on PCGamesN for the original source!

On 26 January, Red Dead Redemption 2 sailed past its previous all-time highest player count. Roughly 86,717 people on Steam were all playing Red Dead Redemption 2 at the same time, a pretty sizeable increase over its previous record of 77,655 players back in November 2023.

For comparison, Red Dead Redemption 2 had 55,271 players at launch on December 2019.

So what’s caused over 30,000 extra people to flock to the game, more than six years after it was first released? Well, there’s a simple reason for that.

Right now, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a whopping 75% off on Steam. That’s down to £14.99 and $14.99 in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

In fact, a whole bunch of Rockstar Games, uh, games are discounted on Steam right now

Max Payne 3 is 70% off (down to £5.39), L.A. Noire is also 70% off (also down to £5.39 as well), and the “Complete Edition” of Grand Theft Auto IV (the best Grand Theft Auto game, don’t @ me) is 70% off (down to £5.09).

Honestly, the fact that you can get all four of these games for roughly £30 is mind-boggling to me. But if you have to just buy one, I’d still suggest you make it Red Dead Redemption 2.

The real question is, why has Rockstar launched such a generous sale out of nowhere? Maybe they’re just feeling generous. Or, maybe they know that once they announce the release date for GTA VI, everyone is going to start saving up for its $100 price tag…