Key facts
- Cheapest right now
- € Standard · Global · Difmark
- Live offers
- 61 offers · 17 stores
- Our pick
- Standard · Steam Gift · Global · K4G — €
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Open the Red Dead Redemption 2 comparison for PC and the first number you see is € (with coupon Gocdkeys). It is real, it is live, and it is not a copy of the game: it is somebody else's Steam account with the game already inside. The cheapest licence that actually becomes yours sits a little higher, at € (with coupon GCDKGamivo), and it does not redeem where most people assume. If you only care about the number, the Red Dead Redemption 2 price page tracks it across every platform. This is about the other half of the purchase: where the thing you bought ends up.
Where does each Red Dead Redemption 2 format redeem?
Rockstar sells this game through several storefronts, and the shops compared here resell all of them side by side. They look interchangeable in a price list. They are not.
| Format | Where you redeem it | Where the game ends up | Live from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rockstar Key | Rockstar Games Launcher, or the Rockstar activation page | Your Rockstar account | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) |
| Epic Store Key | Epic Games Store | Your Epic account | € (with coupon Gocdkeys) |
| Steam Gift | A transfer from another Steam account | Your Steam library, if the sender delivers | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) |
| Steam Account | Nothing to redeem: you are handed login details | Somebody else's account, permanently | € (with coupon Gocdkeys) |
The line that catches most people out is the first one. A Rockstar code will not activate on Steam, and a Steam code will not activate in the Rockstar Games Launcher. They are separate entitlements for the same game, and neither shop will swap one for the other after the fact. Read the format label on the row before you read the price.
What you need no matter which one you buy
A Rockstar Games account, formerly Social Club, and the Rockstar Games Launcher. That is true of the Steam copy as well: installation, activation and online play all route through Rockstar, and on first launch you will be asked to link your Steam account to a Rockstar one. Link them before you install and the launcher signs you in on its own afterwards; leave it until later and you get the sign-in wall people mistake for a broken purchase.
One account pairing per storefront, and it sticks. If your Steam account is already linked to an old Rockstar account you no longer use, sort that out first — it is far easier than untangling it with a fresh code sitting unredeemed in your inbox.
Step by step, whichever code you ended up with
Rockstar Games Launcher. Install the launcher, sign in, open the menu in the top-right corner and choose the redeem-code option. The alternative route is the activation page on the Rockstar site, where you sign in with the same account and paste the code there. The game appears in the launcher library and downloads from it.
Steam. Games → Activate a Product on Steam, accept the notice, paste the code. It lands in your library, and the first launch installs the Rockstar launcher underneath. Our step-by-step walkthrough for activating a game on Steam covers the generic part in more detail.
Epic. The redeem option lives under your account name in the Epic Games Store client. Same principle, different library.
The four things that actually go wrong
Wrong storefront. The most common one by far, and the reason this article exists. Check whether the row says Rockstar, Epic or Steam before paying.
Steam already linked elsewhere. The error message names the conflict but not the fix; you unlink from the Rockstar account settings, not from Steam.
A gift that never arrives. A Steam Gift depends on a person on the other end and carries their region. It is a transfer, not a code.
An account that stops being yours. The cheapest row on the page is shared credentials. The seller keeps them, your progress is not on your own profile, and there is no version of that story where the game becomes yours.
Here is the spread as it stands, one live offer per format:
Editions add a second layer on top of all this: Standard, Special and Ultimate exist for PC, and the extras are online-side rather than story content. If you want the licence that stays on your own account, the sensible route is a code rather than a shared login, and you can buy Red Dead Redemption 2 key offers compared across every verified shop we track, with the format printed on every row.
I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember, and for the last 14 years I have been making life easier for other gamers. CEO and co-founder of Gocdkeys.
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