Red Dead Redemption 2 has reached its all-time peak in concurrent Steam players three years after its debut on the platform. According to SteamDB's entry, 66,492 players played Rockstar Games' captivating Western action game on Steam at the same time. The game's closest record to this was 55,271, which was documented after the title's launch on the platform back in December 2019.
There are several reasons behind the surge of players, such as the Steam Autumn Sale, which witnessed one of the biggest discounts of the game's history on Valve's storefront. Alongside the highly appealing 67% discount, it is also worth noting that the community-claimed death of Red Dead Online is on its fourth anniversary, which might have encouraged players to venture into the old west once again after their farewell. Even though Rockstar announced that it would stop supporting the online sandbox title to focus on the development process of GTA 6, players continue to immerse themselves in the 19th century western, both in the online and the single-player versions of the game.
The Thanksgiving weekend has also played a key role in securing this rather interesting concurrent players record. The recent deals might have attracted the players who have been eyeing Red Dead Redemption 2 at its discounted price. Red Dead Online, on the other hand, bid its farewell a few months ago despite the efforts by fans to keep the game alive.
Most recently, those who spent a considerable amount of time in the game found out that Steam recommends Red Dead Online as a potential nominee for the Labor of Love award. Thousands of fans ridiculed the absurdity of the situation on Reddit, saying that the game was far from deserving the award as its developer stopped supporting it, never allowing the game to reach its full potential. A number of players did nominate the online sandbox to mock Rockstar through the use of Steam Awards, though.
It is worth noting that more and more concurrent player records are likely to be broken in the upcoming days. That's because Valve's massive storefront has been expanding its domain on PC gaming as it submitted a new record just a day ago, reaching more than 31 million active users a month after its latest record. The store's popularity has been on the rise since the beginning of the pandemic, which has resulted in more players exploring its ecosystem.