Rockstar adds more battle royale to Red Dead Online

Rockstar Games has added a new game mode called Gun Rush to Red Dead Online. The new part of Red Dead Redemption 2’s online game component comes closest to how many popular battle royale games currently work.

In Gun Rush, up to 32 players compete against each other on a rapidly shrinking playing field. In that playing field are weapons and ammunition, which players must find and use in order to survive. Gun Rush is playable as Free for All, with each player playing alone, or as a team, with the longest surviving team winning.

The game mode setup is reminiscent of popular games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, but with 32 instead of 100 players. Red Dead Online already contained a battle royale-like mode in the form of Make it Count, but in it all players had a bow or throwing knives by default. The search for weapons and ammunition played no part in this and firearms were not present.

The new game mode is part of the most recent update to Red Dead Online, which is still in beta testing. Rockstar also announced that several changes will be made soon. For example, the way players are punished for crimes, where the goal is for players to pay the ‘bounty’ on their heads within a certain amount of time, otherwise the game will send bounty hunters after them. It will also be easier to avoid aggressive players. In addition, the developer will soon reduce the distance at which players can see other players on the minimap. As an exception to this, Rockstar wants to make players who often attack other players extra visible, but the developer emphasizes that that nuance will probably take a while.

Red Dead Online is the multiplayer mode of Red Dead Redemption 2, which was released in the fall of 2018 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The online game component opened on November 30 and has been in beta testing ever since.