Last year, everyone kind of hated Rockstar’s baffling choice to port 2010’s Red Dead Redemption to Switch and PS4, not really add anything to it, charge $50 for the game, and continue RDR’s decade-plus snub of PC gamers. We had a brief moment of joy on seeing that the lauded cowboy sim will finally launch on Steam October 29, but I’ve had a big reality check on seeing the price.
It’s not exactly a surprise that this port isn’t seeing a price drop relative to last year’s PS4/Switch release, but it still sucks. It’s an assertion of the game’s value, that not only is a Rockstar game worth waiting 14 years for, it deserves to be nearly the price of a full-fat, new triple-A release. Following last year’s fracas over the price, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick asserted that the cost was “commercially accurate,” and even that the bundle of RDR1 with its Undead Nightmare expansion was “a great value for consumers.”
Zooming out, the going rate for a digital download PC port of a stone cold classic from 2010 looks to be about $20, less than half of what is being asked for Red Dead Redemption. Bayonetta, Arkham City, Alpha Protocol, and Mass Effect 2 (as one third of the $60 Legendary Edition) are all just 20 bucks. RDR’s PC version boasts some niceties over the Xbox 360/PS4/Switch versions—ultrawide, HDR, DLSS, and high refresh support—but these are frankly the bare minimum I’d expect from a multiple console generations-delayed port, the things we lambasted the Metal Gear Master Collection for missing at launch.
Is Red Dead Redemption twice as valuable as Mass Effect 2 or Bayonetta? I certainly don’t want to pay $50 for it. There is no shortage of ways to blow that much money on Steam, and I don’t appreciate being told that a port of a 14 year-old game that should have come to the platform ages ago (or at the very least a year ago) is a “great value.” It’s a frustrating reminder of Rockstar’s imperious stance toward the platform ahead of the likely year or more of extra wait we’ll have after Grand Theft Auto 6 comes to consoles.