Talk:Red Dead Redemption 2

I gathered testimonies about the whole "we now need Internet to launch" thing. I'm not comfortable to use that in the article just yet:

• People say that the last patch in September (1.31) produced that sad result.
• The previous patches, 1.27 and 1.26, respectively launched in April 2022 and August 2021.
• Testimonies and main discussion: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1174180/discussions/0/3770110614217408416/#c3770110614221824569
• June 2022. The Steam Deck Compatibility report is published (https://steamdb.info/changelist/15116360/) and the report states the following: "Added configuration/requires_internet_for_singleplayer: 1"

Well... Now it has been fixed with the Title Update 1.32 which was released in March of 2024.

The game seems to show a new crash now, after the update which added DLSS support. Shows itself if you turn on/off DLSS, exit the game and launch it again - game's crashing after some time in main menu (or in game if you've managed to load it before the crash happened).

Says ERR_GFX_D3D_DEFERRED_MEM / Out of memory

Cleaning Windows DirectX Shader Cache with Disk Cleanup utility seem to solve it but I'm not 100% sure that it's the case yet.

Just curious, can you still reproduce this error? I assume that this got fixed through a game update or GPU driver update?

Haven't played the game since last year so dunno.

Sad haha, just let me know if you ever run into this issue again :)

As far as I know, that happens only when the API is set to D3D12, at least that was my case, regardless of the graphic configuration.

I couldn't reproduce it at least last month when running with the D3D12 API.

In my case to fix it I deleted the game configuration file, that reset the settings, including the API.

And after that, did the D3D12 API work correctly for you? Are you sure the game was running on your dedicated GPU with its very latest drivers?

No, D3D12 is not working properly, and something tells me that it is not an isolated case, I have seen performance test videos and all of them have it in Vulkan API. So the best thing will be not to move that.

And I run it from my graphics card, the GTX 1650, it more than meets the minimum requirements, and it's up to date.

Well, D3D12 renderer never had any issues for me. But at what overall settings and resolution did you try to run the game at? GTX 1650 is indeed above minimum spec, but if settings are set too high, possible problems could still be unavoidable. Especially because it has only 4 GB of VRAM. So, if running at 1440p for example at higher settings, I could easily see it happening that the game's VRAM management can't keep up and thus throws this error when it runs out of VRAM. I assume you also have no modifications installed right? I saw you btw undid my undo, I agree as the issue seems to be quite vague.

I suspect the freezing issue (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption_2#Freezes_in_certain_missions) and Error: unexpected shutdown due to lack of memory (ERR_GFX_D3D_DEFERRED_MEM) (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption_2#Error:_unexpected_shutdown_due_to_lack_of_memory_.28ERR_GFX_D3D_DEFERRED_MEM.29) are both being caused by a weaker CPU and/or GPU while running at too high settings. Can you test turning D3D12 renderer on while running at the game's lowest settings and see if the issue then still occurs?

Especially think the freezing issue is simply caused by the game being severely limited by a weaker laptop-based CPU. I assume your GTX 1650 is indeed integrated into a laptop. Wouldn't see much any other way that disabling two cores having access to the game could otherwise solve the problem. Likely the game runs into such a heavy CPU-limit, that hardly anything can function anymore, thus the game appears to be freezing. Actually doubting a bit if this is really the game's fault and maybe not also a bit the weaker hardware. Did you check if your CPU meets the minimum requirements, because I suspect that may actually be the culprit here.

Btw, thanks for taking my feedback into account and improving your added issues during the undo of my undo :)

I tell you, I run the game at 720, in all games I do, and I tried either in safe mode, low or high graphics, and it gave the same error. In my case I have a desktop pc, the GTX I installed relatively recently. When I play in the Vulkan API, regardless of the graphics settings, the game runs normally, but I still keep the resolution.

Of course, I don't set the graphics configuration to full ultra, as it would consume much more video memory than what is available, so I simply set the best graphics configuration and make sure it doesn't go over the limit.

Can't sadly read your last message as I only speak Dutch and English, but at 720p, you shouldn't be getting errors probably... So, lets indeed leave it in for now and see if more people come in with similair problems. But what is the CPU that's in your PC?

Sorry about that, I already corrected it. Regarding your question, I have a Ryzen 3 3200g. According to what I have seen the graphics does not take full advantage of it even at 720p, but it is still functional.

Then I don't have a clue what specific issue is really causing this within the D3D12 renderer, so lets leave this topic open :)

So far, the consensus is to keep the "information" qualifier.

Shouldn't we list "All versions require Rockstar Games Launcher DRM and an internet connection on launch" as a negative thing rather than just an "information"? (with the "--" template instead of the "ii" template)

IMHO, the fact that we need an internet connection on launch is SUPER negative. 😅

It is getting more and more common nowadays and on many other pages it is also just mentioned as an information point. I think converting it to a negative is thus not really necessary, especially due to the constant internet requirement likely being a bug.

As Jigen123 btw already pointed out. Haha, are you sure you're not getting too close to this situation? :P Whatever it is, I would think it would be best to never let your frustration influence your edits... :)

If course I am! 😅

Ok, good to hear, but then with Jigen and me agreeing on that it might be best to leave it as an information point, this case is settled then? ...if nobody else wants to jump in anyways :)

Yeah. I don't think there's an issue here. The current version is fine. I was being goofy when I replied.

Ok, good haha :)

Issue was removed (a while back actually, but only now noticed this post) as after further testing it turns out that "Game mode delivers full HDR capabilities. Cinematic mode appears washed out and desaturated as it is just SDR at maximum brightness." See HDR note on the PCGW page. It was thus a choice by the developers, one that is very unclear to users, so the note should clear this up now.

HDR looks washed out (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption_2#HDR_looks_washed_out)

My suggestion is to remove this issue, since it's not an "issue" but a stylistic choice, and the fix is subjective at best.

Thoughts?

I don't agree. The default HDR implementation is just broken and looks terrible. SDR looks better. The only way to make it look good is with this guide, or similar methods, and it does look stunning after that.

I agree with Filoppi. It's definitely not a stylistic choice to have such a _drastically_ different visual style in the HDR rendering of the game.

game crashes on Vm any fix from what I know this is thier fault and is on puropse is htere a fix?

I wonder if "DRM-less" version works in VM.

You can downgrade, or you can tinker with acpi tables.

People with AMD motherboards are getting an error telling them to verify their game files. This seems to be primarily happening with purchases from the epic store. The actual solution for this is to update their bios. I've had success with this fix as well. I can't verify if this is exclusive to AMD but everybody I've seen who has specified their motherboard seems to have an AMD one. I'm not knowledgeable enough to write a universal guide that would work for every brand of motherboard, so I'm posting this here in case somebody else is.

AFAIU there are two kinds of similar (but very different) problems: launcher vs game launch crashes.

One has something to do with AMD cpus, the other doesn't. Also, not everybody seemed to have success with the BIOS update (which isn't even clear if it has something to do with AGESA, µcode, or what)

And as if this wasn't enough, rockstar seemed to have done something to address the issue.

You don't have to write an universal guide, but fixes shouldn't even just be handwaved if I can explain.

Started getting this error after the new update whenever I loaded into a save, after some investigating I found deleting the sga_vulkan_final_init files (should be 3 of them) inside "Documents\Rockstar Games\Red Dead Redemption 2\Settings" would let me load in without any issue (game regenerates them when they don't exist), seems like I need to do this each time I want to start the game though...

I'm not really sure if this is just something to do with my setup or not so didn't add this to the article yet, made a few posts on reddit about it though so I guess we'll see if it helps any others.

Well I've had two confirms from other people that this lets the game work for them (seems this issue is kinda rare already so I can't really expect tons of responses), but now that I'm pretty sure this isn't just something on my end I'll add something to the article about it in a sec.

E: also, another small issue with the new update: some reason the settings button is grayed out on the main menu now, need to wait 10-20 seconds for it to enable itself... not sure if that's worth a mention in the article or not though, but there's been lots of people asking about it on the subreddit (previously the button was always enabled, dunno why they changed it)

Strange, after playing for a bit and making a new save, now I can play the game fine with the sga_ files in place, no need for me to delete them now.

I guess maybe it had something to do with where I saved it before? Unfortunately can't remember where my save was when I was getting the crash, will have to try checking some older saves.

If this is the case I guess it should be added to the article? Since this'd mean you don't need to delete the sga_ files each time, just delete them once, load in, and save in a different location. I'm still not completely sure the location is what caused it though...

EDIT: aha, found my old save and yep, the crash still happens with it, so I guess that must mean the problem is location-based?

For reference, my chara was located at the bottom-left of the "N" in "LEMOYNE" on the map: hxxps://i.imgur.com/JpDeq7D.jpg (can't post URL for some reason...)

Would be interesting to see if anyone else gets an error there with the cache in place.

E2: Loaded my crashy save with sga_ files deleted, moved to a different area and saved game, then restarted with sga_ files from last run, and it loaded in fine!

Added a mention about needing to relocate to the article, would still be nice if someone else can try saving at that location I posted and see if they also get a crash in Vulkan mode though.

"Fixed it by going into Online (because that worked for some reason) and then loading my single saved game from there, and it worked after that."

From this comment.

Does it help? It would be better than removing files.

Just gave it a try and seems not :( Switched to Online on the menu and tried loading in, load screen showed up for a few seconds but then gave the same error.

(strange that my bugged SP save would effect the online part, maybe because I haven't set up my online chara yet or something...)

Removed the cache files & tried again, and it loaded in fine.

Too bad, that would have been a better fix. Sounds like it can help for some people though, could still be worth mentioning it I guess.

There is not much evidence for it that I'm aware of. Thanks for adding the main fix to the article though. Since the addition, I've seen multiple reports of people saying it works.

I just created a batch file to cd to the "Settings" folder and del sga_* and then launch RDR2.

I have been having the same issue using Vulkan API. Deleting sga files has worked thus far, but sometimes it just loads fine, and I believe the location based theory is correct. I saved near clemens point after hunting iguanas where the pirate hat is located on that island, and then closed. When I tried to load it next time I booted it up, it was crashing on me. This happened early on when I first started playing, so it was very strange this time. But I deleted the sga files, and reloaded, and instead of freezing with basically a white screen as before, it piece mealed in different parts of where I was, meaning the land first, then fog, then half of arthur's body, the particle physics (like the flies above the water) and then the rest loaded in, and I was able to play. It is stupid that u am playing so slowly bc I'm afraid my game will crash somewhere, and I am saving after everything I do, like picking herbs, or random person run into. I have taken to saving at back at camp, because camp has loaded up each time so far, and hopefully it continues to. Or hopefully, they figure out wth is going on and fix IT. This white screen crash when loading seems to only happen with Vulkan, because when it happened initially, I switched to DX12, which loads fine, but crashes every time I try to enter thru Valentine's town from the meat seller/horse stall side of town. I believe this post is true to why the crashes are happening.

Also, when I was loading up after my save, it was loading at clemens point. The gang camp was still back at horshoe overlook, early in the story mode

The statement is inexact. The exclusive fullscreen mode does work via Vulkan, but it is buggy. It gets automatically reset to borderless window at the refresh rate of your desktop (usually 60 Hz) every time you change a graphic option or you restart the game. You can easily reproduce this by selecting a 50 Hz refresh rate and the display will switch to exclusive fullscreen at 50 Hz, until you restart the game.

I did additional testing at your suggestion. I created a custom resolution with the width and height of the native and set it to 50 Hz. I launched the game in the DX12 mode but the game window was borderless. Then I set the API to Vulkan and restarted the game manually - after this it still would not minimize to the taskbar from the launch screen, no settings touched. Then I looked at the settings to confirm that the Screen Type was Fullscreen. Setting back from 50 Hz to 60 and back and restarting had no effect either.

Keep in mind that I do not have a G-Sync monitor, but the statement we have in the article isn't exclusive to G-Sync monitors either.

I stand corrected. After several tests under both Win7 and Win10, I came to the conclusion that indeed the exclusive fullscreen mode is buggy and will silently fall back to borderless window mode (while still indicating "fullscreen" in the settings).

The difference is that in Windows 7 the game can force the desktop to change its refresh rate (for example 50 Hz), but for some reason it doesn't work in Windows 10. Under Win10, if your desktop is 60 Hz, the game will be locked to 60 Hz (borderless) even if you try to change the display rate in the settings.

What's also interesting is that this "refresh rate" setting is actually controlling two options: the display rate proper, but also the frame rate. Under Win7, when you set 50, you actually set 50 fps as well as 50 Hz. If you try 50 under Win10, you'll get 50 fps BUT forced 60 Hz, which will produce obvious stuttering.

In short, exclusive fullscreen doesn't work. And if you want to run the game at anything other than 60 Hz, you have to change your desktop at the desired display rate before running the Rockstar launcher. Of course that doesn't help much for GSync/FreeSync screens.

A new NVIDIA hotfix driver was released today which is supposed to help with stuttering in Vulkan mode - though really after the latest game update (also released today) the stutter seemed to be mostly gone already, maybe it can still help somehow.

As this is a hotfix it doesn't show up on the NVIDIA driver search / GeForce Experience / etc, seems it can only be found on the support page they posted it: hxxps://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4930

Might be worth mentioning it in the article, since it'd be pretty hard to find otherwise.

Thanks. That is now done. Could you check whether it solves any of the issues known to you or experienced by you, then do a quick search on reddit or any other places you know of, and remove the instructions that are no longer necessary? Keeping notes of updates for a while is still important but it's best to clean up the article to give more visibility to any of the outstanding issues and applicable fixes.

I'm mainly thinking of Red_Dead_Redemption_2#Game_stuttering

One of the reasons for creating PCGamingWiki was the lack of easily accessible and comprehensive instructions on making games work.

As such, the guidelines of the wiki state "if the fixes provided are not explained in a clean and easy to follow process, then they are useless. Ultimately, this defeats the purpose of this wiki.", "Do NOT ever assume that the reader can "figure out the rest". Provide a full set of instructions for the fix, up until the game is fixed completely and can be played." and so forth. Avoid one-line recommendations unless they are fully sufficient.

Moreover, we want to make sure instructions or other claims are verifiable or come from credible sources, because otherwise articles would become polluted with all kinds of anecdotal evidence that may be purely coincidental, making them extremely hard to navigate and distracting from the useful, verifiable claims and detailed instructions. The wiki exists to summarize and outline the best of the available fixes for each game. Attempting to be a disorganized collection of blog posts and disconnected user comments would defeat the purpose of the wiki. This is also the reason we should avoid providing general instructions within game articles and take them to guide pages. There is no doubt that lowering graphics settings or closing unused applications can improve performance, but that is applicable to all games, it is common sense, and thus of no added value to each specific game article.