Red Dead Online Players Are Finding Piles of Dead Horses

Update: Rockstar has provided the following statement concerning the issue players have been experiencing in Red Dead Online.

"The issue affecting some players in Red Dead Online that was causing reduced numbers of animals in session and other knock-on effects has been resolved."

Original story: Something strange appears to be going on within the world of Red Dead Online. Red Dead Redemption 2 players who have been testing out the game's online component since its last big update are finding huge piles of dead, seemingly burnt horses in certain locations. It's taken players by surprise, and the piles don't appear to be playing nice with the servers either as performance reportedly takes a hit when players try to investigate the strange occurrences.

From the usual places like Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit, players have been sharing videos and screenshots of these piles of horses they're finding. The video above was uploaded to YouTube and shows an example of these ominous piles with one lone man standing in the middle of the carnage. He's slashing downward at the ground and the horses, for some reason, and you can see that some of the horses are sticking up haphazardly and aren't all laying down perfectly.

Another example of this can be found in the video below that shows a player riding their unburnt horse through the pile, and that same guy is still there. To make the scene worse, some of the horses pop up occasionally as their models conflict with the rest of the horses in the pile. Another user on Twitter commented about the horse piles and asked if anyone else had seen them, and based on the multiple accounts about them, it looks as though this isn't an uncommon occurrence.

Came across a giant pile of burnt horses. It might've been spawned by the guy in the middle; I have no idea......https://t.co/IxaqHEs3FF

— Olclau (@MR_X_Tyrant) May 19, 2019

The same user who asked about the horses said that getting too close to them may cause players to lag out. We see some evidence of that in the video above where the performance seems to suffer as the player rides through them.

It's unclear at this time what's really going on with the horses, but signs point to this being some sort of grotesque bug, possibly one that surfaced because of the big beta-exiting update which was recently released. There's always the chance it could be setting up for some type of event, but it seems like a messy and confusing start to one if that's the case.

Thanks, Polygon.