According to this data, Rockstar Games made, on average, around $1.3 million in daily revenue from just Grand Theft Auto Online over the last year. Taking a wider look, the weekly revenue for the online game comes in at around $9.5 million. For comparison, Red Dead Online doesn’t seem to be nearly as profitable, bringing in an average of $507,193 on a weekly basis. For an entire year – from September 2025 to April 2026 – Grand Theft Auto Online has seemingly generated around $498.8 million. The numbers for Red Dead Online, the two-year period between June 2024 and March 2026, generated an average of $26.4 million in yearly revenue.

The data also includes revenue by platform. The PS5 version of Grand Theft Auto Online seems to be the most popular, with around 3.4 million weekly active users, who generate around $4.4 million through weekly purchases in-game. The PS4 is the second most popular, with 1.8 million weekly active users generating $973,308. Xbox Series X/S saw 1.1 million weekly active users, making Rockstar Games around $1.8 million, and Xbox One still sees around a million weekly players, generating $918,373. PC is in last place, with 894,621 weekly players generating $264,273.

It is worth noting that the PC version’s low revenue generation might come down to the fact that the platform allows players to play modded versions of Grand Theft Auto Online. This, along with the popularity of custom servers that support a variety of mods, means that players are less likely to partake in Rockstar Games’ in-game microtransaction options like Shark Cards.

Rockstar Games, for its part, hasn’t commented on any of the data that has been released by the hackers, which should also bring into question their veracity.

ShinyHunters had gotten its hands on the data over the weekend by taking advantage of Rockstar Games’ instances in Snowflake by using the recently breached Anodot. The group had announced that it would be releasing all of the data unless the company paid them by today. While ShinyHunters promised “several annoying (digital) problems” would pop up for Rockstar Games, the Grand Theft Auto 6 developer simply responded by saying that it “has no impact on our organization or our players.”

Grand Theft Auto 6 is deep in development as Rockstar Games, along with parent company Take-Two Interactive, get ready for its November 19th release on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. While few details have been released as part of the company’s careful marketing strategies, a report from last month has indicated that its development costs may go over $2 billion. For more, check out our thoughts on whether Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be the most expensive game ever made.

As part of the new update, players will get to kick things off by getting their hands on an item called Strange Tales of the West Vol. 1, which can be picked up from your camp’s lockbox or any post office in the game. Through this, players can take on new Telegram Missions, which will revolve around supernatural entities like undead plagues, and swamp beasts, among others.

“Author Theodore Levin needs your help investigating the bizarre and unexplained in Strange Tales of the West — a new set of four eerie Telegram Missions available tomorrow in Red Dead Online,” wrote Rockstar, setting the stage for the new series of Telegram Missions. “Track down undead plagues, rogue automations, swamp beasts, and more by collecting Mr. Levin’s letter from any Post Office or your Camp’s Lockbox, or by launching Telegram Missions from the Player Menu.”

Along with this new set of missions, Red Dead Online is also rewarding players with triple the amount of Gold, RDO$, and XP that they would otherwise get. Naturalist get an additional triple the amount of RDO$ and XP on Sample Sales, triple Role XP and XP on Legendary Animal Sighting missions, and double RDO$ and XP on Wildlife Photography. Players that log in to Red Dead Online at any time throughout the month of July will also get the Rebellion Poncho to celebrate US Independence Day.

As caught by Reddit user PapaXan, there are also a host of discounts on a variety of goods in the game, from cartridge pamphlets to pistol customisations, and even on clothing items like hats, coats and gloves. The event is also bringing back some of the previously-sold limited-time clothing from the game, including the Owanjila Hat, the Clymene Coat, and the Winter Shotgun Coat.

The studio had confirmed back in 2022 that it would no longer be releasing major updates to Red Dead Online, since it needed more of its staff to work on upcoming open-world title Grand Theft Auto 6. As a result, Red Dead Online has largely been getting smaller updates, with this Independence-themed one being the first major themed update in a while.

Red Dead Online is the multiplayer component for Red Dead Redemption 2. While it was originally envisioned to be similar to Grand Theft Auto Online, Red Dead Online has since taken on a life of its own, focusing more on giving players a sandbox world through which they could live out their cowboy lives.

Red Dead Online can be played on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. While the console version of the game is technically only available on the previous generation of consoles, the backwards compatibility features on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S also allow the title to be played on modern systems.

According to Zelnick, this comes from the fact that, for more than a decade now, Rockstar’s main contribution to the Grand Theft Auto franchise has been through the release of updates for GTA Online. He compares this to a time before an Internet connection was ubiquitous, and a game would simply be released before the studio would move on to its next project.

“Remember, back in the good old days, or the bad old days depending how you look at it,” said Zelnick. “We would work on a title, release the title, hope for the best, and then make another title. Now we have the opportunity for consumers to engage on an on-going basis with our hits. Be that through downloadable add-on content, or through multiplayer versions of those games.”

In more modern times, Zelnick compared the amount of content that has been added to GTA Online to being equivalent to being like full releases in the past. “In the case of Grand Theft Auto, we have Grand Theft Auto Online, and Rockstar has been supplying content to Grand Theft Auto Online, some of which is so robust that if you go back 15 years, it would have counted as a standalone title,” he said.

“One could really argue that Rockstar has been putting out a new Grand Theft Auto release a couple of times a year. Same thing holds true for Red Dead Online, which has been on-going. And in the most recent quarter, Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online has exceeded expectations.”

He also brings up the fact that similar online components available in games like the NBA 2K or the WWE 2K franchises have extended the time players spend with these games up from just a few months “to basically 12 months.”

“Our strategy is when we give consumers a hit, they would like to stay engaged,” explained Zelnick. “And that requires our teams to create more content quite properly, to support that content and to market that content. The business has become a worldwide, on-going business. I would argue that Rockstar is delivering to its consumer base daily, and it has been doing that for quite some time, basically since 2014.”

Since the release of GTA 5, the only major title released by Rockstar Games has been 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2. However, since then, the studio has been working on Grand Theft Auto 6, and work on the highly-anticipated open world game began “in earnest” in 2020. There have also been other releases in the GTA franchise in the time between GTA 5 and now, including Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, which included GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is in development for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

The open-world title remains the best-selling game of the past decade in the United States based on unit and dollar sales, based on The NPD Group’s report from March 2022. As for Red Dead Redemption 2, it sold-in over 46 million units, up from 45 million in August, while the franchise sits at over 70 million sold-in worldwide.

Rockstar is currently working on the next mainline Grand Theft Auto, which saw a massive leak in September. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently said there was “no evidence that any material assets were taken” and that the leak “won’t have any influence on development or anything of the sort.” Nevertheless, he called it “terribly disappointing and causes us to be ever more vigilant on matters relating to cybersecurity.” As for when official details will be revealed, stay tuned in the coming months.

Overall, the franchise has sold over 68 million units worldwide. Based on The NPD Group’s data on dollar sales, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the second best-selling game in the United States for the past five years.

While a remaster for Red Dead Redemption and current-gen versions of Red Dead Redemption 2 were reportedly in development, they’re both seemingly cancelled. This is due to Rockstar allegedly focusing on Grand Theft Auto 6’s development. Red Dead Online also saw reduced support due to the company “steadily moving more development resources towards the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series — understanding more than ever the need to exceed players’ expectations and for this next entry to be the best it can possibly be.”

The next Grand Theft Auto is reportedly releasing in the fiscal year 2024, so sometime between April 2023 and March 2024 (though it may release by 2025 as well). As for Red Dead Redemption, it may be a long time before we see a follow-up. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Spoilers on the latter: Not much. Let’s start at the beginning, though. Set one year before Red Dead Redemption 2, Red Dead Online presents many of the same open-world elements as the single-player campaign. After escaping prison to exact revenge for a murder one didn’t commit, players could get into shoot-outs, complete story missions, and even make decisions that affected their honor. There were also free roam activities for those who just wanted to explore the world with their horse. The presentation and overall writing received some praise, but problems began almost immediately.

There are two types of currency – Dollars and Gold Bars – with the latter taking more time to grind due to the low payouts of missions. Players calculated eight hours to farm one but you were charged a whopping 12 just to paint the basic revolver black. Want to upgrade your tent? Cough up 112 Gold Bars. Even amenities like food and bullets were expensive, not that paying with Dollars was any better since they were also doled out at a slow rate. The fact that Rockstar was planning to sell Gold Bars for real money later also didn’t help.

And though Red Dead Online was released in a better state than Grand Theft Auto Online, players were still running into bugs and being kicked from sessions. This doesn’t even cover the sheer amount of griefing present. Eventually, the backlash became strong enough against its economy that Rockstar committed to fixing it.

Of course, whether a live service game has brutally slow progression and excessive monetization or not, it lives or dies based on its post-launch content. After the beta launch in November 2018, Red Dead Online was fully released in May 2019, receiving new activities, story missions, free roam activities and so on. The outlaw life was kind of good, and it seemed like Rockstar would have even more content soon.

In September 2019, roughly four months later, it added the hefty Frontier Pursuits update, which introduced roles. Now you could become a Bounty Hunter and earn rewards from bounties; a Trader who collects and sells items; or a Collector who seeks collectibles. This also marked the addition of the Outlaw Pass which was, you guessed it, a Battle Pass with cosmetics. While it wasn’t necessarily the warmest received new addition, at least there was plenty of new content along with the Battle Pass. Interest in subsequent passes would dull as the content dwindled, however.

The Moonshiner role arrived in December, serving as an offshoot of the Trader, but the update also allowed players to purchase their first property. The next update – which added The Naturalist role – arrived in June 2020. While nice to have another role, especially one focused on tracking and/or hunting animals and even using the new Vitalism Studies to control one for a limited time, the long periods between updates were becoming more pronounced. Grand Theft Auto Online, first released in October 2013 on Xbox 360 and PS3, had a new heist, arcades (with playable arcade games), 20 new vehicles, and a new in-game radio station in December 2019 alone. This was followed by six new co-op missions in April 2020.

By that point, Red Dead Online was found lacking in support and updates compared to its big brother, and Rockstar wasn’t exactly rushing to remedy the situation. Not to say there was no new content in the works. But Dead of the Night, a new mode that sees players hunting zombies a la Undead Nightmare and a new Halloween Pass in October 2020, just weren’t enough. At the very least, it did have new weapon variations so that was nice. Bounty Hunters would receive an update in December 2020, followed by three new solo missions in February 2021 and new horse races in May 2021.

Then, in July 2021, Red Dead Online received perhaps its largest update since Frontier Pursuits with Blood Money. It allowed for taking on various Crimes, whether robbing homesteads in free roam, holding up stagecoaches or extensive robberies with objectives ranging from eavesdropping to kidnapping. It added Capitale, which could be exchanged for different criminal Opportunities, and the Quick Draw Club with four passes. Though each cost 25 Gold Bars, completing 25 Ranks on one pass allows for earning that back. Those who didn’t care about the rewards at least got some fun content. But it felt like the same mistakes were being repeated – very little communication and doubling down on things, like passes, that players had little interest in.

Unbeknownst to players, Blood Money would be the last major update that Red Dead Online would receive. Yes, there was a second Halloween Pass and the Christmas event returned with themed maps but that was it. Players were left in the dark about what was coming next.

Those remaining eventually decided to hold a funeral for the game on July 13th 2022. The idea was to show up in-game with funeral attire and essentially mourn the “death” of Red Dead Online. It was perhaps intended to send a message to Rockstar. But no one could have guessed that the Red Dead Funeral would coincide with the actual death of major support.

Several days prior, Rockstar confirmed that Red Dead Online would no longer receive any “major themed content updates” as it had in previous years. “Over the past few years, we have been steadily moving more development resources towards the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series – understanding more than ever the need to exceed players’ expectations and for this next entry to be the best it can possibly be.”

It didn’t outright announce the end of support. There would still be events that would highlight “existing content” along with “seasonal special events” (so the return of Halloween and Christmas events, essentially) and new Telegram Missions. But that’s all, folks.

The news was bad enough, especially before the funeral was set to take place. But it was preceded by details of all the new content coming to Grand Theft Auto Online soon. The message was clear – any resources on Red Dead Online, regardless of how meagre they had been since the last major update, were better spent elsewhere.

How did it all go wrong? Was it simply because Grand Theft Auto Online was already so entrenched as Rockstar’s de facto live-service game? Was it due to the lack of content and consistent support for Red Dead Online? Was the developer’s approach to the game, both in terms of its design and monetization, flawed from the outset? We may never really know.

However, as long as Grand Theft Auto Online continues to rake in the revenue for Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive, its support will continue. Heck, as long as Grand Theft Auto 5 continues to sell millions every quarter, both parties will do anything to ensure the next big sequel is a success.

As for the future of Red Dead Online, support may stop altogether in the next year or two, though servers going down may take even longer. Roger Clark, the voice of Arthur Morgan, tweeted in response to the funeral, “Although today it has my sympathies, I know this community will never die. #outlawsforlife.” Unfortunately, if the single-player campaign taught us anything, it’s that one way or another, the Wild West has to end, and no amount of Outlaw Passes or can stop it.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

In a recent Newswire article, the developer confirmed that it had been “steadily moving more development resources towards the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series — understanding more than ever the need to exceed players’ expectations and for this next entry to be the best it can possibly be.” It’s changing how it supports Red Dead Online as a result.

Large themed content updates are no longer coming with the developer instead focusing on monthly events to showcase current Specialist Roles, co-op missions, Showdown Modes and so on. There will also be seasonal special events and new Telegram Missions released this year along with plans to build on existing modes. It’s not being put out to pasture just yet, but the signs are there.

Grand Theft Auto Online continues to thrive though. A new update is out in the coming weeks which expands on the Criminal Careers, namely Executive, Biker, Gunrunner and Nightclub Owner. New Contract Missions that offer the chance “to be sworn in as a special IAA field operative to investigate a budding criminal conspiracy” are also coming.

Players can also look forward to balancing changes like homing missiles and countermeasures on the Oppressor Mk 2 being less effective, launching Sell Missions while in Invite Only sessions, and an easier way to access snacks and armor. These improvements are due this Summer. GTA$ payouts are also being increased for Bodyguards, Associates and MC Members, as well as for activities like Adversary Modes, Races and certain Heist Finales.

Players can also expect “specially curated seasonal events, additional bonuses and gifts, community challenges, and other surprises for players will ensure that Los Santos remains as dynamic and unpredictable as ever.”

Behind the scenes, Rockstar has reportedly shelved remasters of Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption 1 to focus on Grand Theft Auto 6. Head here for more details on the same.

Zelnick has stated that fans of Red Dead Online will have to wait for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online developer Rockstar Games to add new content to the game.

“Rockstar Games talks about the updates that are coming, and we’re working on an awful lot at Rockstar Games,” said Zelnick. “I’ve heard the frustration, it’s flattering that they want more content, and more will be said by Rockstar in due time.”

In an update after the original statement, Take-Two Interactive made it clear that any commitments Zelnick may have made about Red Dead Online‘s future are referring to the game’s servers staying live, rather than any confirmation of new content making its way to the game.

The Red Dead Online community started talking about the lack of content in the game with the #SaveRedDeadOnline hashtag in January. The community’s major sources of frustration revolve around the lack of content, and the fact that whatever updates the game receives are minor when compared to the updates seen in Grand Theft Auto Online.

The community has also expressed frustration at the lack of communication from either the studio, Rockstar Games, or the publisher, Take-Two. Despite Zelnick’s statements and acknowledgement, Rockstar Games has yet to make any statement or announcements regarding future of Red Dead Online or Red Dead Redemption 2.

Recent reports have suggested that Red Dead Redemption 2, which has now sold over 44 million units worldwide, will be receiving current-gen patches for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Assuming that happens, fans will be hoping that Red Dead Online will receive new content to align with that, similar to how Grand Theft Auto 5’s current-gen release was handle.

The developers have revealed the complete Red Dead Online weekly update schedule for March, through a post on the official Rockstar blog. Some key highlights are double XP and RDO$ on regular bounties and player bounties, and Triple RDO$ and XP on Legendary and Infamous bounties. Apart from that, free items are also mentioned, such as five special horse revivers upon logging in, with free whiskey and beers being provided throughout the month via the in-game saloons. Additionally,  2 gold bars on turning a bounty in each week between March 1 to March 28, login bonuses for bounty hunters, and more are being offered to the player base.

To read more about what is in store for Red Dead Online players throughout March, head on to the official blog post. You can also read the featured series calendar planned for this month down below.

RED DEAD ONLINE WEEKLY UPDATE SCHEDULE FOR MARCH

FEATURED SERIES CALENDER

March 1–March 7: Gun Rush (Hardcore)

• Complete 2 Player Bounties this week to receive a Discount for 30% off a Bounty Hunter Wagon.

March 8–March 14: Takeover Series (Hardcore)

• Complete 5 Regular, Legendary, or Infamous Bounties to get a Treasure Map leading to a haul under West Hill Haven.
• Wrangle 10 Regular, Legendary, or Infamous Bounties to receive a Treasure Map with information about a chest located near O’Creagh’s Run.

March 15–March 21: Elimination Series (Hardcore)

• Complete 5 Legendary Bounties to get a select colorway of Tied Pants.

March 22–March 28: Team Shootout Series (Hardcore)

• Complete 5 Infamous Bounties and receive a select colorway of the Hopeman Vest.

March 29–April 4: Showdown Series (Hardcore)

• Completing 15 Regular, Legendary, or Infamous Bounties will result in a prize of 3 Gold Bars.

Recently, the Red Dead Online playerbase took to Twitter with frustration and displeasure with regards to the lack of content the game’s been getting from Rockstar Games, especially when you compare it with Grand Theft Auto Online, which recently got a free story update.

For the last couple of days, fans have been trying to get Rockstar Games’ attention by taking to social media with the hashtag #SaveRedDeadOnline, which has also trended.

The main issues stem from the fact that there has been an increased lack of new updates, and whatever updates the studio is releasing are very minor in comparison to the Grand Theft Auto Online. The last new content update Red Dead Online got was through July 2021’s Blood Money. Many players in the Red Dead Online community feel Rockstar Games is more concerned with facilitating fresh content for Grand Theft Auto Online.

Another thing fans are displeased about is the lack of communication from the studio to its fans, citing that the least the company could do is provide a roadmap for Red Dead Online so that players are informed of what to expect from the game in the future.

Rockstar Games is still yet to say anything about the issue.

https://twitter.com/StanleyCupTrash/status/1479109513634484227

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