You might have seen earlier in the week that a number of outlets excitedly ran with a story suggesting that Red Dead Redemption 2 was getting alien-themed story DLC, and the original Red Dead Redemption was getting a remake, complete with updated dialogue.
As cool as both of those things would no doubt have been, it turns out that the alleged leaker with absolutely no proven track record or concrete sources turned out to be telling tall tales (they was talking out of their bottom, in other words). Shocking, I know.
Reddit user throwaway11113454 (as if the name wasn’t enough of a clue it was bogus) claimed over the weekend that they were friends with an environmental artist at Rockstar Games, and that they’d been told Red Dead Redemption 2 was getting alien-themed story DLC similar to the first game’s Undead Nightmare, in that it would be a spinoff and feature the return of Arthur Morgan.
To be fair, people were a lot more prepared to believe this based on the fact that multiple UFOs have actually been spotted in the 2018 Western Epic, leading many to believe that Rockstar, often the masters of playing a long game, were laying the groundwork for something.
The “leaker” also claimed that a full remake of Red Dead Redemption was in development. It would feature new environments, updated dialogue that referenced the events of RDR2, and would launch late 2020, early 2021.
As much as I’m sure most of us wanted to believe – especially the latter rumour – throwaway11113454 has now come forward and admitted to their web of lies. In a separate Reddit post, they confirmed “there is no DLC for Red Dead Redemption 2 or remake of the first game as far as I know”, explaining that the whole thing was merely a social experiment.
throwaway11113454 wrote:
This was an experiment I have always wanted to do regarding the spreading of rumors in video game culture. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and wondering how I was going to do it, then I saw red dead online was basically being ignored (most likely not, but the fans are in the dust about it, including me) so this was basically a good starting point for me.
Fortunately, after a number of sites actually started picking up and reporting on the rumour, throwaway11113454 decided it’d gone to far and that it was time to come clean. “I learned that some people will believe anything that someone says if it sounds believable”, they concluded.
Does this mean Red Dead Redemption 2 will never get story DLC? Is a remake of Red Dead Redemption an impossible dream? Given Rockstar’s tendency to focus on online modes these days, and the fact it doesn’t actually return to old games as a rule, I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.