Rockstar Games published a thank you note for the fans that jumped into GTA Online and Red Dead Online lately, which resulted in record numbers for both games.
GTA Online is easily one of the most incredible phenomena in the gaming industry since it's been trucking on since 2013 and made Rockstar Games a fortune along the way.
That may not be the case of Red Dead Online but both games saw major growth in 2020, with the pandemic undoubtedly playing a part but it was reinforced by what now looks like updates specifically designed to draw players in. It remains to be seen whether they will manage to hold the new player pool though.
Anyway, GTA Online saw more players in 2020 than in any other year since launch and there are two major factors that immediately come to mind, besides being locked down due to Covid-19. First among them is the fact that GTA V was given away for free on Epic Games Store back in May 2020 and the second is the Cayo Perico heist.
Free to keep offer was claimed by so many people that the store went down for a while and Cayo Perico is practically handing out GTA$ for anyone playing the game.
The situation is not much different with Red Dead Online's record numbers either.
Rockstar Games
While it wasn't given away for free, the online component alone was sold for just $5 which certainly got many people to try it out. However, with the lack of interesting content such as heists in GTAO, RDO will probably struggle to keep the players engaged since most of its gameplay revolves around glorified fetch quests.
There will be freebies in both games to celebrate.
