Red Dead Redemption 2 players getting terrorized by two-headed skeletons

By Giovanni Colantonio February 10, 2020

The source of a bizarre new monster that appeared in Red Dead Redemption 2 over the last few days — two-headed skeletons that stalk and attack players — appears to be the work of hackers, not Rockstar.

Reports of the ghoulish assaults started coming in around Friday. Through the weekend, multiple players took to Steam and Reddit to post accounts of skeletons randomly popping into the game. The two-headed enemies will run up to players and attempt to fistfight them to the death. Despite being seemingly invincible, the creatures will run off when shot at.

Initially, players were unsure if the monsters were intentionally added to the game by Rockstar. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume as the original Red Dead Redemption featured the Undead Nightmare expansion pack, which brought zombies to the western game. However, last year, Rockstar stated that new DLC isn’t its current focus with Red Dead Redemption 2.

Despite the plausibility, it appears that crafty hackers are behind the attack. In response to a Steam thread about the incident, one player mentioned that when a similar attack happened to them, they looked up and noticed a hot air balloon in the sky. The poster also included a screenshot of the player in the balloon who allegedly had a mod menu equipped.

The two-headed skeleton model didn’t appear out of thin air. The monster is visible in the game proper by traveling to Beecher’s Hope. The location contains an overturned circus wagon featuring the skeleton, which is said to belong to conjoined twins reflecting the game’s lore.

Hackers have terrorized the game’s community since the launch of Red Dead Online. Modding tools have been used to spawn all kinds of nightmares, such as hordes of animal carcasses that began attacking players last month.

Rockstar has taken action against cheaters in the past, but for now, players are telling one another to keep an eye out for hackers when the rogue skeletons appear. Players can report anyone they find suspicious, such as those looming overhead in hot air balloons during the attacks. While this can be frustrating for fans who just want to play the game in peace, it’s also the kind of weird experience that certainly keeps Red Dead Online interesting.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Giovanni Colantonio

Section Editor, Gaming

Giovanni is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…

Gaming

Dead Island 2 takes aim at Los Angeles culture, the rich, and influencers

A zombie crawls toward a player on a boardwalk in Dead Island 2.

Getting stuck in development hell often doesn't bode well for games. For every Final Fantasy VII Remake or The Last Guardian, there's an Aliens: Colonial Marines or Duke Nukem Forever. Often, the final releases lack a compelling design identity, chasing trends that popped up over the years and feeling like a mishmash of multiple developers' ideas of what the game should be. My biggest fear going into my hands-on demo with a near-final build of the oft-delayed Dead Island 2 was that it'd feel devoid of much creativity or lack a clear vision; thankfully, I was dead wrong.

Dead Island 2 - Extended Gameplay Reveal [4K Official]

Gaming

Dead Island 2’s Amazon Alexa voice commands are novel, but limited

Dani lights a cigarette as zombies attack her from behind in Dead Island 2 key art.

I’ve always found myself interested in new technologies that could possibly enhance how we play or experience games. Whether it’s a computing innovation like cloud gaming or new controller features like the DualSense’s Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers, I love testing those things out. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to try Alexa Game Control during my recent hands-on preview experience with Dead Island 2.
When Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver’s Dead Island 2 finally launches on April 21, it will be the first game to support Alexa Game Control. By connecting one’s Amazon account to the game, players can use the voice-recognition capabilities of Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa to perform in-game actions like taunting zombies or equipping their best weapons. I was curious to see just how deep this went, but after some hands-on time, this first implementation of it proved to be little more than a novelty.

Hey, Alexa
Dead Island 2 players can toggle Alexa Game Control on when they first show up in Bel-Air after the game’s opening. It has a dedicated tab in the Options Menu where players can choose to enable or disable it, choose whether they want it to work automatically or with push to talk, set the voice capture threshold, and decide which microphone they wish to use.
After enabling Alexa Game Control, I immediately noticed a ring at the bottom-left corner of the screen. When I spoke, this lit up with blue and teal colors, like the top ring on an Alexa device, and text confirming whether it could do the action or not would appear. Not having to say “Hey, Alexa” also means it implemented itself into the game smoothly. At first, I tried to see if voice commands would work for basic things like walking, jumping, and dodging, to no avail. After this, I hopped to a save I had placed later in the game and opened its tutorial menu to see what Alexa Game Control could really do.
Reading its tutorials and lists of commands, the limits of Alexa Game Control became clear. It mainly provides quick shortcuts to save you a button press or two in the middle of playing. In Dead Island 2, Alexa Game Control has four main uses: setting waypoints, taunting enemies, triggering emotes, and switching weapons. The tutorial menus give a complete list of commands that work, although each wildly varies in its usefulness.
Oi, zombie!
The funniest use of this voice technology in Dead Island 2 is taunting zombies. Shouting something like “Hey, dude” or “Oi, zombie” to get the attention of enemies that hadn’t detected me always made me chuckle. It’s also occasionally useful; at one point, I got a bunch of zombies to walk into a large pool of acid and die after taunting them. While it takes the same amount of time as walking up to the zombie to get their attention, I see the potential in voice technology that lets you interact with the world like this.

Gaming

Dead Island 2: release date, trailers, gameplay, and more

soak sunshine slaughter first dead island 2 gameplay screenshot 3

Believe it or not, Dead Island 2 is not only still real, but it's actually coming out. For those who've been following the troubled trajectory this title has had, you know this is a story almost 10 years in the making. Originally revealed in 2014, Dead Island 2 has died and been resurrected no less than twice, with a new development team taking up the project each time. The average person probably assumed the game was scrapped years ago, but for those who never gave up hope, your faith has been rewarded.

Leaks did take some of the excitement out of Dead Island 2's big re-reveal during Gamescom 2022, but it couldn't stifle what looks to be a game far better than its beleaguered history would lead you to believe. Since so much has changed over the course of development, let alone with the entire gaming landscape, plenty of people may be wondering what all the excitement over this zombie game is all about. Grab yourself a blunt object and get ready to smash some zombie skulls as we run through everything we know about Dead Island 2.
Release date