Red Dead Redemption Was Briefly Backwards Compatible, But Not Anymore

Last weekend something surprising happened: Red Dead Redemption, by far the most demanded game to be backwards-compatible with XBox One, magically became so — but it was a secret. The game was not available on the XBox Live marketplace and you couldn’t get it by simply inserting the disc. To make RDR run on the One, you had to know a friend who owned the game already. Then by selecting RDR from their games list, you would be directed to its hidden marketplace page, where you could download it yourself. Bam, you had Marston at last.

Except now you don’t. Microsoft soon caught the leak and patched it out. How does one “accidentally” make a game backwards compatible anyway? As Microsoft later explained, Red Dead Redemption was in the testing phase and wasn’t ready for wide release yet. This also applied to a few other games people found: Halo Wars, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. If players try to access these games now, they’ll get the message that an update has to be applied first….an update that doesn’t exist, rendering them inaccessible.

The good news is, this is absolute confirmation that Red Dead Redemption is about to be added to the XBox One’s backwards compatibility list. If the game was fully functional, it shouldn’t be long…