Rockstar Games has officially launched Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, and though the game retains its excellent storytelling and immersion from last year’s console releases, players have also encountered several bugs that can sully the whole experience, and Rockstar’s own solution doesn’t appear to be helping much.
A thread on the PCRedDead Reddit community is currently cataloging all the known launch issues plaguing Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, and they include several glaring problems that we don’t expect from games in 2019. These include the game completely crashing at its intro or when running a benchmark program, stuttering and framerate drops regardless of PC power, launcher problems for those who have already purchased the game, and audio glitches.
Other players have reported unusual strain being put on their CPU while their GPU is barely used at all, though switching to DX12 helps to alleviate any freezing that could occur.
Several of the players seem to think the problem stems from using Rockstar’s own game launcher instead of Steam — the game will come to Steam in December, but it remains unclear if that will solve any of the issues.
For its part, Rockstar has been directing players to a page on its support website, where it blames the unexpected crashes on outdated graphics drivers. If you have experienced unexpected crashes, you can update them from this page, either for Nvidia or AMD cards. You can also run the game’s file as an administer and disable full-screen optimization — out of 273 votes on the page as of this writing, however, only 34 people found that this worked.
Rockstar has had a tumultuous relationship with the PC platform in the past and has typically launched PC versions of its games after their console counterparts. With Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V, the games were eventually turned into the definitive versions, with modders offering completely new experiences not found on consoles. Not every Rockstar game has made the jump to PC, most notably the original Red Dead Redemption. If you want to experience John Marston’s adventure, you’ll need to buy it for PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
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