Rockstar revert broken Red Dead Online update to fix major problems

Calum Patterson

A Red Dead Online update broke the game and now another has been rolled out by Rockstar to fix it. Though, it has reverted things back to a pre-patch state. 

Shortly after the massive update for Red Dead Online on July 28, players very quickly noticed that there were countless bugs and glitches, some seriously impacting regular gameplay.

The list of bugs and glitches after the July 28 update was so extensive that the game’s subreddit made a dedicated thread for collecting known issues.

The Naturalist in Red Dead Online
The Naturalist update was very long-awaited, but it’s not been smooth sailing since.

The most serious among them was a series of connection errors, stopping players on all platforms playing at all. Just as the community was starting to gear up again in frustration, Rockstar pushed out an update on August 10 to supposedly fix the errors.

However, in doing so, they appeared to have completely broken many other functions of the game, including the disappearance of NPCs, Animals, and Mission Givers. Countless bugs cropped up.

Popular RDO community Twitter page, RedDeadRDC, documented the plight of bugs and glitches.

Game-breaking bugs in Red Dead Online

Players immediately responded with reports and videos of the litany of bugs they had experienced. These ranged from bizarre horse glitches, to a recurrence of the connection errors the update was meant to fix.

Another player listed off all the game-breaking errors they had endured. “No NPCs, no animals, horse wagons drive themselves in Saint-Denis, NPCs that do spawn are unkillable, at some points myself as the player am invincible, auto-aim is broken, dead eye is broken, my horses go invisible or completely disappear randomly, lobbies only have 3-10 players at a time, NPCs disappear randomly.”

List of bugs in Red Dead Online
A list of just some of the bugs one player experienced after the Red Dead Online update.

Again, another mega-thread for issues has been created on the game’s subreddit, with a laundry list of items.

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Following on from this plague of problems, it has been reported that Rockstar have since taken action to resolve things. Well, actually, taking things back to a pre-patch state.

On August 13, TezFunz2 – popular Rockstar leaker – posted the following: “A new patch to Read Dead Online is available on consoles, which rolls it back to the previous state.”

Completely rolling back an update in this way could be a sign of further changes to come in the online game mode. It’s unlikely that the developers will roll out the same sort of update soon, although an improved one will more than certainly be in the works.

Next time, players and devs alike will be hoping things run a little smoother.

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About The Author

Calum is Dexerto's Managing Editor, based in Scotland. Joining Dexerto in 2017, Calum has years of experience covering esports, gaming and online entertainment, and now leads the team to deliver the best coverage in these areas. An expert on all things Twitch and gaming influencers, he's also an expert in popular shooters like Apex Legends, CS2 and Call of Duty. You can contact Calum at calum.patterson@dexerto.com.