There have been rumors circulating for a while now suggesting that Red Dead Redemption is coming to PC. While we always had to take this with a grain of salt, an announcement from Rockstar finally makes it official. It has been a long wait for PC players, especially considering the massive success of the sequel on PC.

The original Red Dead arrived on consoles way back in 2010 and has since been ported to PS4 and Nintendo Switch last year. Now, Rockstar has penciled in an October 29th release date and the game’s Steam store page is up and running. Now that it’s coming to PC, we hope it can be a new go-to title for the Steam Deck.

What does the RDR1 PC port offer?

Thankfully, it looks like some work has been put into this PC version to make sure it’s up to scratch rather than a shoddy port. According to Rockstar game’s recent blog post with the big reveal, we’ll get to enjoy “PC-specific enhancements including native 4K resolution at up to 144Hz”. This is of course a huge upgrade from what you may have experienced back on the PS3 or Xbox 360. Here’s a rundown of what we’re getting:

• Native 4K, up to 144Hz
• Ultrawide support for both 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios
• HDR 10 support
• Full keyboard and mouse functionality
• Nvidia DLSS 3.7 and AMD FSR 3.0 upscaling
• Nvidia DLSS Frame Generation
• Graphics settings including adjustable draw distance, shadow quality, and more

Red Dead Redemption and its Undead Nightmare expansion will be coming to PC on October 29th. At the time of writing, there is no official word on the pricing. The Steam store page also notes that this port “does not feature multiplayer content”.

No word on the Steam Deck yet

As of now, the Steam Deck compatibility is still listed as ‘Unknown’ – this is understandable, as it isn’t out yet. Despite its popularity on the charts, we can’t say that Red Dead Redemption 2 runs incredibly well on the handheld, so we hope to see the original fare much better. This isn’t a complete remaster after all, and the inclusion of FSR 3.0 is a big win for performance gains. The AMD upscaling tech was a big help when we tested God of War Ragnarok, and a 2010 title like RDR1 should be smooth sailing compared to that.

On top of that, the game only asks for 12GB of available space. This is much appreciated by us handheld gamers, especially with the size of AAA titles only increasing as the years go by.

Its recommended specs of a Ryzen 5 3500X paired with the RTX 2070 do seem a little overkill if we’re honest, so we’ll have to wait and see how it all turns out on release day. And while the lack of multiplayer is a small downside, it’s not a deal breaker for us personally. In any case, if Rockstar plans on similar anti-cheat implementation to what they did with GTA V, Steam Deck support would likely be affected.

About the Author

Tom Valentine

Tom is a tech writer with a detailed view on ensuring the best buying advice, most useful information, and latest news makes its way into PC Guide's articles.