Last year, everyone hated Rockstar’s surprising decision to port 2010’s Red Dead Redemption to Switch and PS4, add nothing to it, charge $50 for the game, and continue RDR’s decade-long disregard for PC gamers. We had a brief moment of joy when we saw that the much-praised cowboy simulator was finally coming to Steam on October 29, but I had to check the price for real.
It’s no surprise that this port hasn’t dropped in price compared to last year’s PS4/Switch release, but it still sucks. It’s a testament to the game’s value that not only is it a Rockstar game worth waiting 14 years for, but it deserves a price tag nearly equal to the full-fledged modern triple-A release. After last year’s wrangling over pricing, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick assured , that the price is “commercially in line” and even that the RDR1 bundle with the Undead Nightmare expansion had “tremendous value for consumers.”
To zoom out, the going rate for a digital PC download of the 2010 classic game looks to be around $20, or less than half the asking price for Red Dead Redemption. Bayonetta, Arkham City, Alpha Protocol and Mass Effect 2 (as one-third of the $60 Legendary Edition) are just $20. The PC version of RDR has a few improvements over the Xbox 360/PS4/Switch versions—ultrawide, HDR, DLSS, and high refresh support—but honestly, it’s the bare minimum I’d expect from a port that has been delayed by multiple console generations, i.e. things that we criticized the Metal Gear Master collection for lacking at the time of its premiere.
Is Red Dead Redemption twice as valuable as Mass Effect 2 or Bayonetta? I certainly don’t want to pay $50 for this. There’s no shortage of ways to throw that much money at Steam, and I don’t like being told that a port of a 14-year-old game that should have been released on the platform ages ago (or at least a year ago) is a “great value.” It’s a frustrating reminder of Rockstar’s imperious attitude towards the platform ahead of the likely year or more of extra waiting we’ll have to wait after Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on consoles.
