As you might expect, social media has been abuzz with speculation today following a supposed tease by Rockstar Games of a sequel to its hit Xbox 360 and PS3 title, Red Dead Redemption.
With only a grainy red background to go on so far – which is admittedly stylistically similar to Red Dead’s aesthetic – users have naturally turned detective in an attempt to discover what the developer has up its sleeve. Although many have attempted to edit the image in various ways in an attempt to glean possible clues from it, others have sought out information from other sources. While some misinformation that has been circulating, such as a mocked-up Red Dead Renegade poster claiming a Fall 2017 release, are easily discredited, other snippets – at least at face value – appear to be much more reliable.
For instance, a number of people have delved into the source code of Rockstar’s website in an attempt to data mine any morsels of information that may point to a yet-to-be-announced project. Within hours of the first teaser photo going up on social media, users believed they had cracked the code. By using Chrome’s built-in developer tools and inspecting the site’s homepage, a string of text could be discovered that apparently pointed towards an upcoming game titled Red Dead Retribution:
However, all is not as it seems. The code in question is part of Rockstar’s website analytics, and refers to a page previously visited on the site by the user – even if it returned a 404 error – effectively creating a false-positive result. In the above image, for instance, notice the apparent reference to Red Dead Redemption 2, which indicates the user in question had first tried to access that URL before Red Dead Retribution.
It appears, therefore, that users will have to wait for a bonafide announcement from Rockstar as to their upcoming plans; everything else at this point should be dismissed as speculation unless officially confirmed.
