316,679 reviews. Eighty-five million copies sold. Twenty-one thousand people playing right now, on a random Thursday in May, in a game old enough to be in second grade.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the number-two best-seller on Steam — not in some nostalgia category, not on a “classics” list, but on the main Top Sellers chart where it sits alongside games released last month. Subnautica, also from 2018, holds a spot near the top of the Top Sellers chart with strong concurrent player numbers — reportedly among the highest of any game currently on sale on the platform.

Both titles are 75% off as part of Steam Ocean Fest, a themed sale running through May 25. The discounts slash RDR2 from $59.99 to $14.99, and Subnautica by a reported 75% as well. At those prices, both are outselling full-price releases that cost four to six times as much.

The Discount Flywheel

This is the Steam economic model at work — still one of the most effective long-tail revenue engines in the games industry. A deep discount puts a proven title in front of millions of browsers. The review scores do the rest: 92% positive for RDR2 across 316,679 reviews, reportedly overwhelmingly positive for Subnautica as well. Those aren’t marketing materials. They’re a trust mechanism no ad buy can replicate. New players buy in, generate more reviews, push the game back up the charts, which drives more visibility, which drives more sales.

RDR2’s SteamCharts data tells the story. The game has never dropped below 20,000 average concurrent players in any month since its December 2019 Steam launch. Its all-time peak of 99,759 came in February 2025 — more than five years after release. That’s not a tail. That’s a second wind that keeps getting second winds.

What 316,000 Reviews Actually Say

The top reviews for RDR2 paint a familiar picture. The highest-voted positive review calls it a “generational story, interactive open world, and a sandbox experience where you can run into the wild and roleplay whatever role you want.” The highest-voted negative review, from a player with 63.5 hours logged, reads in full: “Can’t slap horse balls.”

Both are accurate. Both were probably written years after the game’s console debut. And both, in their own way, explain why this game refuses to die — it’s a world people want to inhabit, whether they’re there for the narrative or the sandbox nonsense.

Subnautica’s reviews reportedly follow the same pattern — capsule reactions from people who spent real hours underwater and felt moved enough to say something brief and genuine.

The Take-Two War Chest

The player behavior driving these charts is one story. The business math is another. During Take-Two Interactive’s earnings call on May 21, CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed that Red Dead Redemption 2 has now sold over 85 million copies, making it the third-best-selling game of all time. Take-Two projects net bookings of $8 to $8.2 billion for the coming fiscal year, driven primarily by the launch of GTA 6 in November 2026.

RDR2 at $14.99 is not the engine of that revenue. But it is a permanent fixture in the ecosystem — a game that keeps selling, keeps drawing players, and keeps the Rockstar brand at a simmer while the company prepares the biggest entertainment launch in history. Every Ocean Fest sale that pushes RDR2 to number two is a reminder to 21,000 concurrent players that Rockstar makes worlds worth returning to. That’s marketing that pays for itself.

Why New Releases Can’t Compete

The uncomfortable truth for any studio launching a new single-player game in 2026: you are competing with RDR2 at $14.99 and Subnautica at 75% off. These are not budget titles. They’re AAA and indie respectively, with RDR2 carrying a Metacritic score of 93, each offering dozens or hundreds of hours of content. They have review volumes no new release can match on day one, player communities that have been building for years, and price points that make impulse purchasing frictionless.

Steam’s sales model has turned quality into a compounding asset. Make something great, and the platform will keep finding new audiences for it indefinitely. Make something mediocre, and you get your two-week chart run before the discount bin absorbs you.

Right now, two games from 2018 are beating almost everything released this year. That’s not a fluke. That’s the economics of longevity — and a problem every new launch has to solve.

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