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Red Dead Redemption 2 'spider' secret has been confirmed by a former Rockstar employee... but don't expect a reward for finding it

Red Dead Redemption 2's elusive Spider Dream Mystery is confirmed to be a real feature of the game, says ex-Rockstar employee Adam Butterworth. Just don't hold out for any big prize for solving it

News by Grant DeArmitt, Staff Writer

Published on Mon Jan 12 2026

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Despite having come out more than seven years ago, Red Dead Redemption 2 still holds surprises for some players. In fact, some of the game's most devoted fans have made a hobby of going through the game with a fine-toothed comb, seeking out all those little surprises left by programmers during the game's long development. And now, one of those creatives is going on record about long-speculated secret hidden deep within the game...

Even though you might consider the reveal a little anticlimactic.

Let's back up. For a few years now, RDR2 players have been experiencing a curious, repeatable phenomenon in the hills of Ambarino, unofficially referred to as the 'Spider Dream Mystery.' Essentially, players would find markings on poles and webbed imagery that led to one particular location, but only at certain times of the in-game day. And even though the patterns appeared to be the same across players' experiences, the path was so difficult to find that, in some areas of the Red Dead community, folks even wondered if the whole thing was intentional.

Well, according to Adam Butterworth, it was.

As reported by Hypebeast, former Rockstar employee and member of the game's own Quality Assurance team Butterworth took to social media to confirm the reality of the Spider Dream Mystery on January 5.

"Absolutely wild people have found this," said Butterworth. "I remember hearing about this and thinking it would never be discovered."

Well that's got to feel pretty vindicating, eh Red Dead Redemption 2 players? The only thing is that that vindication, it seems, is really the only reward for discovering (and cracking) the Spider Dream Mystery. No new loot, tools, or cutscenes have been seen to be associated with the mystery.

Ah well, I guess that's what the Wild West is all about, right? Sometimes you hit it big, and sometimes, you spend a whole lot of time chasing nothing.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is available wherever games are sold. And who knows? Maybe there's even more mysteries just waiting to be discovered.

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Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.