Red Dead Redemption Fan Remaster Project is Probably Dead

There is one inescapable truth about fan-based gaming projects. Namely, that the legal sword of Damocles always tentatively hangs above their heads. As such, when we first heard the news of a Red Dead Redemption PC Remaster being created by fans, we doubted it would survive for very long. These things do, after all, have a habit of ‘getting around’.

So, as you might expect, someone in Rockstars (or again, more probably Take-Two Interactives) legal department caught wind of it and it seemed in September that the project was likely to be shut down by the dreaded cease and desist notification letter. Despite this, however, the (unnamed) project leader “GamingDamned” suggested that they were going to carry on regardless. More on this shortly.

In a report via DSOGaming, however, it seems that fresh legal action may have finally struck the death blow to this fan project. Yes, the Red Dead Redemption ‘Damned Enhancement Mod’ does appear to be as lifeless as poor Arthur Morgan.

Red Dead Redemption

So, you might at this point be wondering exactly what this fan-project was up to? Well, to clarify one of the biggest points, they were not looking to completely remake the game for the PC. What they were instead doing was essentially creating a highly-detailed mod pack. One that was specifically designed to work with emulated versions of the original Xbox 360 and PS3 ROM files.

This mod would effectively sit on top of the base game while providing nicer graphics and full PC (mouse/keyboard etc.) support. It seems, however, that beyond this, work was also underway to provide some kind of mod support for the latest release of RDR2 to effectively turn it into the original game. I have to admit, I wasn’t personally aware of the latter. It does, however, appear to have been at least in the pipeline.

The short version is, it’s hard to know exactly what stage the development was at. It may, however, have been this distinction that caused the original legal action to hit a stumbling block.

As part of the new legal action (issued early last week) the lawsuit claim states:

“Those unauthorized changes include importing the entire game map of 2010’s Red Dead Redemption into the 2018 game Red Dead Redemption II; enhancing graphics and visuals in Take-Two’s Red Dead Redemption game; allowing players to play an enhanced version of the game on personal computer. PC is a platform for which Take-Two itself has not yet released the Read Dead Redemption game.”

What Happens Now?

Well, it seems that the latest lawsuit has had the intended effect. As can be seen on the GTAForums page, the ‘lead’ of the project has now officially confirmed that work on the mod pack has been canceled. This is, clearly, disappointing news. Particularly since any PC release of the original game still seems to be unlikely.

For the moment, however, all we can say is that in terms of playing Red Dead Redemption for the PC, the wait continues… Well, unless you can tolerate that crap version on the PSNow platform…

What do you think? Are you disappointed to hear this project has been shut down? Do you think Red Dead Redemption will ever come to the PC? – Let us know in the comments!