Red Dead Redemption added and quickly pulled from Xbox One

Over the weekend, a few lucky gamers were treated to something special. Red Dead Redemption was found to be available on the Xbox One, making it the most recent game to receive the backwards-compatibility treatment. Unfortunately not long after it was available, it was rendered unplayable.

A little while back, Microsoft decided that they would no longer make announcements when new games were added to the backwards-compatible list. Instead, if you already own the game on the Xbox 360, it will just show up in the digital library on your Xbox One. Seems like a terrible way to communicate, but they're the ones running a huge corporation, and I'm just sitting at my keyboard typing.

Now that you're up to speed, let's look at what happened over the weekend. Lots of people were suddenly able to download and install Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox One, but they weren't actually supposed to be able to do it. It turns out that during Microsoft's testing phase, if you had a friend that had the game installed, you could go to their profile, select the game, click on "see in store" and then install it.

It's hard to say how many people were able to install the game using this method, but unfortunately as quick as it became available, it was taken down. Cleverly, Microsoft issued a mandatory update for the game, which rendered it unplayable.

Microsoft's Major Nelson commented on the Reddit post on /r/games that had the full instructions on how to accomplish this feat. Here's what he had to say on the matter:

Microsoft tests all Xbox 360 games with our emulator to ensure a quality experience across a breadth of titles. Due to an error, some of the games currently in test were accidentally made available. We have since removed access to those games, and apologize for any confusion this may have caused. We will have more information on upcoming releases soon.

His wording makes it sound as though they're testing every single Xbox 360 game, regardless of whether or not it is being prepped for release. Despite his wording, I'm guessing that we'll be seeing Red Dead available for download again in the coming weeks.

Source: Reddit