The Rockstar Games Launcher on PC just got another update yesterday, and along with the patch came down yet more evidence of a forthcoming release for the first Red Dead Redemption game on PC. We knew this was happening; the same fellow who sniffed out the new evidence, found strings buried in the Rockstar Launcher proving it back in May.
What we didn’t know was whether it would be coming to Steam, or restricted to Rockstar’s own game launcher. This is a big deal to many players for a few reasons. Playing Rockstar’s games requires you to have the Rockstar Game Launcher installed regardless of what storefront you use, but having all of your games in one library is extremely convenient, and if there’s a dispute between gamers and the game publisher, Valve has a much bigger stick to swing in favor of consumers.
Well, the specific data found in the launcher update was the metadata for the Steam release of Rockstar’s second cowboy game. There’s nothing to see in the repositories for the game yet; SteamDB simply records the Steam ID as “Unknown App” and the only thing in the update history is that the ID was created. The Steam App ID was clearly listed in the Rockstar Games Launcher update files, though, so we feel pretty confident that John Marston’s big adventure is finally coming to its proper home on the PC.
There is some discussion to be had surrounding the idea of purchasing a re-release of this game. Red Dead Redemption originally came out in 2010, nearly 15 years ago. We’re very happy to see classic console games come to the PC for the sake of preservation, but it must be said that many of us who enjoyed this game back in the day still have our game discs. Emulation for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is mature enough at this point that PC gamers can enjoy the game that way, and even use enhancements like boosted resolution and frame rate.
No word on whether the PC release will include any particular enhancements or PC-specific features, but we hope it at least gets keyboard and mouse support alongside a few accessibility settings, like an FOV slider. That alone would make it worth the purchase, but it would be even better if the PC release enjoys an increase in texture resolution or other upgrades. We’re not holding our collective breath, though, considering that the PS4 and Nintendo Switch releases of the game last year came with no such enhancements.