Well before players saddled up their horses in Red Dead Online, GTA Online had made quite a name for itself amongst the gaming community. What started as a series of competing game modes in Grand Theft Auto 4 has transformed into its own MMORPG with varying quests, grinding, and mini-games that have drawn millions of players in. The gameplay of GTA Online consists of players roaming an open world in search of money and property in order to boost their status in the criminal world. With more money and power, players get access to better properties, vehicles, and heists.

This has appealed to a lot of gamers and builds successfully off the world Grand Theft Auto 5 sets up. GTA Online has also given Rockstar the opportunity to continue to monetize a nearly eight-year-old game by releasing DLC that wouldn't fit in with the conclusion of the main game. When one also factors in the sales on Shark Cards, it only makes sense that Rockstar would want to give a similar experience in Red Dead Online.

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It may be an open world where players are set free to roam and complete objectives, but other than that, Red Dead Online shares very little with its online Grand Theft Auto counterpart. When Red Dead Online was released, it allowed players to group up with their friends in a morality based story. When not doing those missions, players could hunt and take missions from classic Red Dead characters across the wide open game map.

Once players had done most of those available quests, many felt as if the giant map held little actual substance. In the years since its initial release, Rockstar has added Roles, new game modes, gameplay improvements, and customization options in an attempt to lift Red Dead Online's reputation to GTA Online's.  Whether Rockstar could accomplish this or not would require GTA Online's level of content and immersion, while improving on its formula.

Red Dead Online launched in November 2018 to initial excitement, but many players quickly felt like there was little to do across the giant Red Dead Redemption 2 map after finishing the story missions and few encounters. Rockstar seemed to be focusing more on its in-game currency, with items costing outlandish amounts that would take forever to earn. There were also issues with griefing, where players would specifically seek out the same person and kill them over and over again to keep them from taking part in the game's fun.

These things obviously impeded gameplay, and Rockstar promised it would rebalance the economy and limit player visibility in order to make the game more user-friendly. These issues seemed to be resolved with a few updates, allowing Rockstar to spend most of 2019 and 2020 promoting impactful new content for its Red Dead Online service.

In September 2019, Rockstar released its first of the profession updates with the Frontier Pursuits DLC. This update to Red Dead Online added the Bounty Hunter, Trader, and Collector Roles for players to take part in once they've paid the fee. These Roles acted as ways for players to make some extra money while becoming more connected with their in-game character. Each of these roles will put the players in unique situations where they get to make decisions that will further affect the morality system. The first three roles really showed what Rockstar intended the Roles to be, sending players across the map in search of different targets.

At the end of 2019, Rockstar released its Moonshiners expansion that allowed players to run their own distillery on the black market. Seven months later in July 2020, the latest new Role, The Naturalist, update was released. This allows players to track and study animals as opposed to hunting and killing them, which other parts of the game relied heavily on. These updates have provided a lot of unique opportunities for players they could never find in GTA Online. Each of these Roles are introduced by a unique new character that will help the player on their journey to become the best at that respective profession.

When Red Dead Online was released for PC in Nov. 2019, it had roughly 55,269 concurrent players on Steam. In comparison, Grand Theft Auto 5 had 204,137 concurrent players, this being six years after its initial release. Red Dead Redemption 2 was already starting some distance behind GTA Online, but Rockstar had planned to release further content at that point and imagined it would bring players over. However, player numbers began to decline quickly in the months after its release. The only thing that seemed to stop the gradual decrease would be the release of the DLC, which even provided a small bump in 2020.

As previously mentioned, The Naturalist update for Red Dead Online was released in July 2020. Steam's concurrent player chart shows the first increase in players since the release date, with the number jumping from 23,167 in June 2020 to 26,223 in July 2020. For comparison, Grand Theft Auto 5 had 154,677 players in June 2020. While Rockstar surely had high hopes for Red Dead Online, it seems the rollout of content has been able to attract any meaningful attention. That being said, in the last year Rockstar has been able to retain a level amount of concurrent players around 30,000.

Ultimately, Red Dead Online may never be GTA Online, but there's still lots of way to expand on the content. Perhaps these numbers will spike some day and it may rival its contemporary, but if not, there's still plenty of fan excitement for an eventual, hopeful Red Dead Redemption 3.

Red Dead Online is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.

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