In the crazy economy of Red Dead Online, baked beans are more valuable than gold rings

If anyone thought in any capacity that Rockstar wasn't going to make RDO as much, if not more of a lame, timesink chore than GTA V, then that would be extremely naive and shortsighted. Rockstar found great success in creating boring, grindy, and samey content for GTA online for 5 years while making ludicrous amounts of money. RDO will be no different. While it does sadden me that this game will go the way of whales and hackers, it does not surprise me

I think it's important to mention that the online is still in beta and that micro transactions aren't even enabled yet. Of course it's important to criticise and give feedback to RockStar but it's not like this is the final release.

It's funny how there's still an attempt to frame these stats as a "balancing" issue or in relation to some real-life cost of items in 1899. I mean, those numbers are completely artificial, duh. The only slightly relevant value is comparing it to singleplayer prices (like 3 times higher) but even that isn't the issue. The real problem is that virtual items with virtual rarity get real-life price tags. I don't even understand why this is legal, a completely fake economy you can put real money into.

Did anyone really expect anything else? It became very clear with early GTAV Online that Rockstar saw how easily people would pay real money for their in-game cash and quickly switched their entire plan to cater to that. They quickly dropped the idea of making everything attainable through a slight grind and switched to a model where purchasing in-game currency was the only real way to buy most of what they added to the game.

Many people claim that this is Rockstar shooting themselves in the foot, or how they've lost good will, or how this is the beginning of the end. They survived doing this for over five years with GTA Online, and then still made insane amounts of money with RDR2's single-player only release. They're going to do it again and keep on making hundreds of millions of dollars. They made $700mm in GTA Online a single year alone. They're not losing this model, or suffering from it, any time soon.

Does it suck for those of us who want an online experience without any added payments? Sure, but there's no arguing with the cash flow. The vast majority of people aren't really buying Rockstar's games for the online—the numbers of people playing online aren't nearly the amount of copies sold (at least, not in those first few years). They'll play the campaign, maybe try out the online a bit, and then call it. Those people aren't who Rockstar are interested in designing the online for to keep them around. What the online is for are those people who will keep buying in-game currency and building up their own little virtual life in this sandbox they enjoy. Those of us who want a fully self-contained online experience will never get it from Rockstar now, not after they saw what that tiny population of their fans are willing to give them instead.

But here's something: I've logged close to 300 hours in GTAV Online and I have spent $0. I've racked up these hundreds of hours by playing the content that GTAV Online launched with, and all the content they added to it during the years. I have never been locked out of any actual gameplay modes, only certain game mission lines (which are mostly blase) that require purchasing some form of property. The things they have added to the game are surprisingly extensive and a lot of fun. I don't have any of the strange new vehicles, but I have the weapons. I don't have those new wild properties but I have played most of the levels in their surprisingly expansive crazy Hot Wheels style racing mode, or spent hours playing with friends in their Slasher mode.

GTAV Online is a huge cash grab but it is not entirely a cash grab. If you simply want to play Grant Theft Auto, that is still on the table with no money down. I've amassed close to 300 hours without spending an extra nickel and have enjoyed new and fresh content for years. I understand there is no way I'd be able to "access" all the content but, at the same time, why would I want to? I don't want all those outfits, those cars, those properties—they're not why I enjoy playing GTA.

If there is anything I would have changed about my time with GTAO, and is now something I'd consider for RDRO, it's this: I would have paid a hacker to grant me billions of dollars. Rockstar does not care about my money, they know they won't get my money. However, they also are not putting effort into making their games cheat-proof or hack-proof since they're also not aiming to provide an actual MMO or competitive game, only a multiplayer sandbox for people to get lost in. Some in my gaming group went this route with GTAO and they only benefited over these years. Rockstar never took away their money, and they were able to buy everything that came out. And, togther, we were able to play all the new content just fine. They can have the ridiculous clothes and cars, as long as I get to access the same new gameplay that they do. I do not care enough to stop playing the game just because I can't buy some new supercar I'm not really interested in. If I had to pay more to get access to the new gameplay modes or gameplay content, then I'd reconsider pretty quickly.

Admittedly this is far from my ideal scenario but, hey, if Rockstar are going to devote all their attention to whales, I'm happy to operate by myself in the shadow of their gaze and derive my own enjoyment from their product. And $10 extra (on top of the $60 I'm already happy to pay for a Rockstar single-player experience) to enhance hundreds of hours of online play seems like a good deal to me.