Red Dead Redemption PS5 patch lured back at least 16% of lost players

Red Dead Redemption's PS5 patch saw players coming back to the PS4 port after a massive active player decline of over 50% hit the game in its first month.

Lee Brady

Published 12 Oct 2023

Despite being a modern port of one of the best PS3 games ever made, the initial rush of players hunting down those PS4 Red Dead Redemption trophies was ultimately rather lukewarm, and things only got more tepid from there. Within three weeks of launch, Red Dead Redemption had shed over half of its initial active player base — though things are looking a little better with the latest Red Dead Redemption PS5 patch.

Red Dead Redemption PS4 lost over 54% of players in a month

Red Dead Redemption's PS4 player count was not off to a great start at launch. In its first week (ending Monday, September 4, 2023), Red Dead Redemption had debuted as the 88th most-played PS5 and PS4 game — according to our sample of 3.2 million active PSN accounts (courtesy of our partnership with GameInsights).

Things did not get better for Rockstar Games' classic title from there, as Red Dead Redemption dropped 25.2% of its active PS5 and PS4 player count by the next week, and a further 22.4% of its players the following week. The week after, the game fell out of the top 200 most-played PS5 and PS4 games entirely, meaning Red Dead Redemption's active player count had dropped at least 54.04% just three weeks after launch.

However, as of this week [ending Monday, October 9, 2023], it seems Red Dead Redemption's active player count across PS5 and PS4 is back on the rise, with the game regaining at least 16.12% of its launch player count. The game has also returned to the top 200 PlayStation Chart, and has even bounced back with 6.5% more players than it had at the end of its third week on sale.

Red Dead Redemption was beaten by a Yu-Gi-Oh game on its PS4 launch.

The rise in players correlates with the release of the recent PS5 patch for the game on Wednesday, October 4, 2023. Despite only seeing a release natively on PS4, Rockstar issued a patch for the title that would give players the option to toggle on a 60fps mode when playing the game on PS5.

The new patch helped address one of the biggest criticisms of the game — that despite being ported to the modern consoles, Red Dead Redemption was still locked to 30fps, even on the powerful PS5. News that the game was now in some way enhanced for Sony's latest console must have struck a chord with PS5 players, helping Rockstar's title to recover some of the interest it had lost in weeks prior.

With the lack of any other major changes or upgrades, and with the removal of all online modes, the PS4 port of Red Dead Redemption still has plenty of issues for fans to chew over. Here's hoping the fresh burst in players can convince Rockstar to continue pouring effort into the port. Have you checked out the game since its PS5 port launch? Does it stand toe-to-toe with any other PS5 games, in terms of performance? Let us know down the comments.

Chart compiled using gameplay data from over 3.2 million active PlayStation accounts (not just TrueTrophies accounts). Chart information is copyright GameInsights. Regarding this data:
Popularity is measured by a game being booted up and played, not by the length of time played.
Our data is good for suggesting general trends — we represent this using percentages, not numbers.

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Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee keeps one eye on the future (Astro Bot), one eye on the past (PS1, PS2, and PS3 games), and his secret third eye on junk he really likes (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Sonic). A PlayStation fan for over 25 years, he loves replaying classic games via PS Plus.