Why Is 'Red Dead Online' Full Of Dead, Burned Horses?

Red Dead Online players are reporting seeing piles of dead horses, skinned and burned, in Valentine.

Needless to say, it's a creepy sight to behold, but not only that, it's also causing some gameplay issues. From what can be gathered, it appears to be a duplication bug.

Red Dead Online's Dead Horses Problem

Players have taken things to social media websites such as Twitter and Reddit to report their findings.

According to users, their games crash when they go near one of the piles of horse carcasses. They are also experiencing problems such as server disconnections and drops in framerate.

What's Causing It?

As reported by Kotaku, the appearance of piles of dead horse is believed to be caused by a duplication bug. For the uninitiated, the glitch lets players catch a large fish and duplicate it in their inventory using a certain method that involves their horses.

Others are also saying some areas aren't spawning animals and NPCs at all, effectively making them ghost towns. This is said to be Rockstar Games' temporary solution for the issue so that players can no longer abuse the duplication bug.

A Rockstar Games representative also told Polygon that the issue has been fixed, but they didn't go into detail about it. If nothing else, that confirms that the disturbing sightings aren't deliberate at all.

It's unclear if this really is the root of the issue, but at any rate, it occurs more frequently on the PlayStation 4. However, Xbox One players have also reported about seeing the corpses of horses.

Recently, Red Dead Online came out of beta with an update that should "strengthen and stabilize" the multiplayer component of Red Dead Redemption 2, but it seems that there are still a lot of kinks to iron out.