Fans say Red Dead Online’s disappearing animals fix actually does nothing

After a year of randomly disappearing animals in Red Dead Online, Rockstar finally launched a patch to repopulate its world. But according to fans, the patch hasn’t changed a thing.

In February of 2019, we reported that Red Dead Online was nearly unplayable — in large part because all the game’s animals had mysteriously disappeared. Player horses, wild deer, and even some townsfolk were missing from the game world entirely. In a game all about rural America and the wild west, animals play a big role in not only the game’s immersion, but also its many gameplay systems, such as hunting.

Update 1.17, released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Thursday morning, claimed to solve this issue. The patch notes read: “Improvements to reduce issues with ambient wildlife populations in certain Red Dead Online sessions. Ongoing improvements are underway to reduce these issues across all platforms.”

But according to Red Dead Online fans trying out the new experience, the patch has yet to solve the game’s population problems.

“Logged on today and still saw no animals,” said Twitter user Silentc0re. Other users have taken to Twitter to express a similar sentiment — with the consensus being the patch failed its primary directive to return the animal population to Red Dead Online. Tez2 claims they were able to find some animals in a large lobby of players, but found a completely derelict swamp after switching sessions.

The last time Rockstar Support’s official Twitter account acknowledged the issue was Feb. 3, promising the 1.17 fix. Reached for comment, Rockstar did not respond in time for press.