Some developers who were working on projects for Google's soon-to-be-shuttered Stadia cloud gaming platform have been pulled from their positions (opens in new tab). Many gamers have lost their saving progress and available platforms, and no one has been punked more than YouTuber (opens in new tab) and TikTok (opens in new tab) creator Colour, GamesRadar (opens in new tab). reported that he has over 6,000 hours (opens in new tab) on the Stadia version of Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption Online 2. That rooted cowboy fun is about to be lost to time, like tears in the rain.

6,000 hours is an utterly staggering length of time to spend on something. Not the usual "too much time in the game"; this is 250 days. I have been lifting barbells and kettlebells religiously for five years and have reached a level that I would be comfortable calling "intermediate to advanced." By back-of-the-napkin calculations, that means I've actively pursued one of my primary hobbies for 1,500 to 2,000 hours during that time.

An even more maniacal and enthusiastic calculation would conclude that Korol has played 6,000 hours of RDR Online 2 since its stadia release in November 2018, an average of over 4 hours per day. If you factor in weekends, it's closer to 6 hours, and Colour has done a lot of content creation for RDR Online 2." It's kind of like their job to be "in charge of RDR Online 2 stadia," but I still think this is an utterly mind-boggling amount of gameplay time! This is my Pepe Sylvia (opens in new tab).

But forget all that logistics, Korol's time investment in Red Dead Online is in grave danger of becoming one of the libraries in Alexandria that are constantly on fire on the Internet every day. It doesn't have to be this way.

There are ways to transfer single-player progress from Stadia's RDR2 to a PC, but not the multiplayer transfer that Colour needs. ports of Stadia, such as IO Interactive (open in new tab) and Bungie (open in new tab). Other developers that have ported Stadia, such as IO Interactive (opens in new tab) and Bungie (opens in new tab), are actively working on ways to make it possible to transfer player data to other platforms.

Colour, for its part, is hoping for a "one-time character transfer" to save progress from the jaws of oblivion. We have asked Rockstar for comment and will update this article if we hear back.

We may not understand why Colour is spending so much time and spirit on "Reed Dead Redemption Online 2" in Stadia, but we can admire his dedication. Hopefully Rockstar can help them out before the winds of fate blow Colour's progress away like a digital sand mandala (opens in new tab).