Take-Two CEO says Red Dead Online was not a missed opportunity

Red Dead Online may still feel like the Western mode that got left behind, but Strauss Zelnick is arguing that the scorecard starts somewhere else. The Take-Two CEO pushed back on the idea that the online component was a missed opportunity, leaning instead on Red Dead Redemption 2’s enormous sales as proof that the franchise paid off.

That argument got a fresh boost from Take-Two’s fiscal 2026 results, released May 21, 2026. The company said Red Dead Redemption 2 had sold over 85 million units to date and had posted its highest annual unit sales since its launch year. Take-Two also said the game had climbed past Wii Sports to become the third best-selling video game of all time, a number that lets the publisher talk about Red Dead as a franchise-scale hit rather than a single multiplayer product that failed to become GTA Online 2.0.

That is exactly where the split with players still lives. Fans have long measured Red Dead Online against Rockstar’s runaway live-service machine, Grand Theft Auto Online, and by that standard the comparison was always going to sting. On July 7, 2022, Rockstar said it would stop rolling out major themed content updates for Red Dead Online and shift more resources toward GTA VI, while keeping the mode alive with events and maintenance-style support. The announcement sparked years of backlash, including organized protest and an in-game funeral planned by frustrated players who saw the cutback as a dead-end, not a victory lap.

Rockstar’s own activity in 2026 shows the mode never fully disappeared. Its Newswire still listed Red Dead Online updates in May, including posts on May 5 and March 31, with the usual trading, moonshine, naturalist, and other bonus rotations. That keeps the servers, events, and small-scale engagement alive, but it is a far cry from the kind of long-term expansion fans imagined when the game launched.

Zelnick’s framing lands like a closing argument: Take-Two is satisfied because Red Dead Redemption 2 became a colossal seller on its own terms. Players, though, are still looking at what Red Dead Online could have been if Rockstar had treated it like a platform instead of a side mode.