After Red Dead 2 Reviews Hit, Take-Two Stock Soars

After suffering a slight dip over the last couple of weeks, the stock for Take-Two Interactive--the parent company of Red Dead Redemption 2 publisher Rockstar Games--is on the rise after positive critical reception for open-world western for PS4 and Xbox One. This puts the company's stock near its all-time high.

As of the time of writing, the stock is at roughly $120 USD, a gain of about 9% from yesterday's market close. For comparison that's almost four times the increase of the overall NASDAQ average gain today, of which Take-Two is a part. That doesn't quite recover to its high point of $138 in late September, but it's close considering the stock only steadily entered the triple-digits over the last year.

The most precipitous fall came in mid-October, just after an interview with Dan Houser kicked off criticism about Rockstar's development culture and crunch. He later clarified that he was only referring to the long hours of himself and a few other senior writers, but the criticism persisted. The company allowed developers to speak openly and at least one studio called a meeting to explicitly tell employees that overtime isn't mandatory. Just yesterday Kotaku published an in-depth investigative piece regarding crunch at the studio.

Positive reviews appear to be serving as a shot in the arm for the company stock. The game has scored an aggregate score of 97 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic, earning it a "Must Play" designation. In GameSpot's Red Dead Redemption 2 review, critic Kallie Plagge said that despite being a prequel, Red Dead 2 stands on its own.

"Red Dead Redemption 2 is an excellent prequel, but it's also an emotional, thought-provoking story in its own right, and it's a world that is hard to leave when it's done," she said.