Rockstar Games has not had the best track record of server issues for its online games, with GTA Online suffering multiple outages just this month. Red Dead Online has faced similar turbulence since it was released, and was lampooned for it in Media Molecule's Dreams by a user named Rikkiscafe.
The Red Dead Online build, which was published to the Dreams website with the description "How long will you continue to play?" Starts players off as a cowboy who gets to walk just a few steps before encountering an error screen. Each error is punctuated by the iconic losing horn sound from The Price is Right before the game is reloaded and crashes again, ad infinitum.
While Rikkiscafe's creation is a good few months old, it resurfaced Saturday thanks to a video posted by Reddit user iferraz2 to the r/RedDeadOnline subreddit. With Dreams officially released on the PlayStation 4 February 14, no doubt this Red Dead Online joke is one of many things which will be brought back up for air by players exploring the vast catalog of creations made during its early access.
Red Dead Online has consistently been improved upon since launch, but it still faces its fair share of issues with online connectivity. It has also been the victim of hackers, with a recent event seeing aggressive, unkillable two-headed skeletons wreck havoc on an unsuspecting playerbase.
In a robust creation tool like Media Molecule's Dreams, where making games, images, and experiences seems only limited by one's imagination, parodies of pre-existing titles seem like an inevitability. At one point the former Head of Sony's Worldwide Studios Shawn Layden said Dreams would change game creation, so it only makes sense that it would change games criticism too.
Despite the criticism, as playfully as it was delivered in Rikkiscafe's creation, Red Dead Online continues to see updates and a strong community has stuck by it. Earlier this month Rockstar gave all players a limited time free Bounty Hunter's Kit to celebrate its success, and barring any more catastrophic skeleton attacks it seems fair to say the game will keep thriving for a long time to come.
Red Dead Online is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.