The recent buzz around Red Dead Redemption 2 has ignited the gaming sphere with anticipation ever since the reveal of the project, with most people being ecstatic about the announcement of Rockstar's first new project in five years. However, players have also become concerned about the impact of the new game on the current reigning king — GTA Online.
The main source of the concerns is the fact that Rockstar has revealed along with the announcement of the game that Red Dead Redemption 2 will contain a dedicated multiplayer mode. While this was present in the original RDR, it wasn't as in-depth as 2013's GTA Online. After Take-Two nabbed the Red Dead Online domain name, it became pretty clear that the company is preparing something similar to GTA 5's multiplayer mode for the wild west romp.
Obviously, the main issue people have with this is that they think this means GTA Online will be ignored and will die off. The media buzz around RDR2 is so immense that it's no surprise people are assuming it will be as big a hit as Grand Theft Auto 5, or even bigger. In that case, it's also logical that many would think Rockstar will shift its resources to the bigger fish, like they did with Online, abandoning Story Mode.
Mostly, the fears are being voiced by players who don't have that much interest in Red Dead because — gasp — people like that actually do exists in spite of what the internet would have you believe. A vintage wild west setting may be seldom explored in modern AAA games, offering a fresh world to play in, however it may not be everyone's cup of tea.
Now, there are a host of reasons why Red Dead Online won't mark the GTA Online apocalypse, so before we even delve into these reason, you can rest assured that multiplayer fun in Los Santos won't be a thing of the past anytime soon, and that Rockstar will continue to support and update Online well after the launch of RDR2.
The first and most important reason we've got is infinitely simple: Red Dead Redemption 2 has absolutely no chance of matching the success of GTA 5. No way. Zero. Now, this may seem hard to believe if you've been paying attention to the gaming press these past days, seeing as RDR2 has been flowing out of every feed. Every gaming journalist, blogger, tweeter, enthusiast, streamer and their cat has been speaking about RDR2. How could it possibly be less popular than GTA 5?
The answer to this lies in silence. Fact of the matter is, the people who read gaming news online and are active in various communities such as forums are a minority within the larger audience. A very very vocal minority, but a minority nonetheless. To put things into perspective, the number of people who found out about the RDR2 announcement via the loading-screen ad in GTA Online is likely several multiples of those who found out about it via the news.








