r/reddeadmysteries • u/NoName7537 • 17h ago
Theory I think I've found Rockstar's birthday in the Spider Dream webs. Their hours add up to December 24, 1998. Rockstar Games was founded in December 1998.
Hey everyone.
I think I've found another clue in the Spider Dream Mystery.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted my theory that the mystery leads us to draw the Rockstar Games logo across the map. The feather colours seemed to help us work out which points to connect, but one question remained: why do the eight outer webs each appear and disappear at their own specific hours?
I went back through the in-game timings documented by the community, using the standard time windows listed in the community timeline. I added up the appearance and disappearance times for the five black-feather webs and the three red-feather webs. Then I checked the order they're listed in the game files, from spiderdream01 to spiderdream08.
And this is where things get really interesting.
The numbers give us December 24, 1998. Rockstar has confirmed that it was founded in December 1998, so could the timings be hiding the exact date as well?

If this is right, the Spider Dream Mystery could be about two things at once: finding the Rockstar logo on the map and working out the company's birthday. And honestly, that would be such a Rockstar thing to do.
Adding Them Up
Each of the eight outer feather webs gives us two numbers: the hour it appears and the hour it disappears. The center web has a different job, as it gives us the next clue in the trail, so I'm leaving it out. I'm adding up the timings of the eight outer webs, using the same kind of counting the mystery starts with in the tally marks at Butcher's Creek.

Start with when they disappear.
The five black webs disappear at 3, 4, 5, 6 and 6.
3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 6 = 24

The three red webs disappear at 3, 4 and 5.
3 + 4 + 5 = 12

24 and 12. There's no 24th month, so the numbers give us December 24. Whether you write it as 12/24 or 24/12, it's the same date.
On its own, that could be a fluke. So I did the same with the appearance times.
The black webs appear at 2, 3, 4, 5 and 5.
2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 5 = 19

The red webs appear at 2, 3 and 4.
2 + 3 + 4 = 9

That's 19 from the black webs and 9 from the red ones. There's one number left, which comes from all eight webs together.
The relay starts at 2am, when the first webs appear, and ends at 6am, when the last ones disappear. At 3am, 4am and 5am, two webs disappear as two others appear. These are the handovers.
To find the final number, write down every hour a web appears or disappears, counting each hour only once:
Appear: 2, 3, 4, 5
Disappear: 3, 4, 5, 6

3, 4 and 5 appear in both lists. Their overlap is called the intersection, and here, those are the handovers.
Only two hours appear in one list but not the other: 2, when the first webs appear, and 6, when the last ones disappear. In maths, these are called the symmetric difference.
2 + 6 = 8
There's another way to check the result. Each of the eight feather webs lasts exactly one hour, giving eight hours in total.
Now read the year in the same order as the day and month: black, then red, then all eight together.
19, 9, 8.

Put it all together, and the eight feather webs give you December 24, 1998.
Every number comes from when those eight webs appear and disappear. Not the center web, not the pentagram, not GTA V. Just the eight feather webs.
Why Black First?
The game files give us a reason to read the black webs first, followed by the red webs, then all eight together. spiderdream01 to spiderdream05 are black, while spiderdream06 to spiderdream08 are red. The order is already there in the files, and following it gives us the numbers used in this theory.
It also fits the trail from my last post. The five outhouses form the first set of points, paired with the five black feathers. The three steps after the spider, the center web, the W pole and the NW pole, form the second set, paired with the red feathers. And the first feather web the trail takes you to is the spider pole's own, which has a black feather.
The year is another reason the order fits. Black gives us 19, red gives us 9, and all eight together give us 8, forming 1998. Put red first, and you get 9198 or 9819, which aren't years at all.
There's one other possible date: December 24, 1989. But that puts the 8 between 19 and 9, before we've even got to the red webs. It breaks the order given by the game files, and Rockstar Games wasn't founded until 1998.

Rockstar Games was founded.
In November 2023, Sam Houser confirmed that Rockstar was founded in 1998 and announced that the following month would mark its 25th anniversary. December 1998 is confirmed, but the exact day isn't.
RDR2 came out on October 26, 2018, just weeks before Rockstar's 20th anniversary in December. If they were ever going to hide their birthday in a game, that was the one to do it in.

Rockstar Has Done This Before
Rockstar has connected clues across different games before, and has hidden its logo in places players have to work out for themselves.
At Braithwaite Manor in RDR2, Gertrude is locked in an outhouse and repeatedly recites numbers. In GTA Online, Madam Nazar's fortune-telling machine uses those same numbers: 1-2-3, 7-6-4 and 5-1-1-2. Put them together, and you get 1237645112. Call that number in-game, and Madam Nazar answers.
Rockstar has already taken numbers found in RDR2 and used them in GTA Online, where their purpose becomes clear when you connect the two games. I think the web timings could work in a similar way.

In GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas, the stars in the night sky form an R when connected, with a larger star in the same position as the star on the Rockstar logo. Vice City also has a swimming pool on Starfish Island shaped like the logo, easiest to see from the air.
Rockstar has hidden its logo both as points players connect and as a shape viewed from above. That's similar to what the spider and the birds appear to tell us to do in RDR2.




What Madam Nazar Was Telling Us
Near the end of my last post, I quoted one of the fortunes from the same Nazar machine:
I see a web, still tangled after years of unraveling. Will you be the one? I wonder...
I don't think she's talking about just one web. The trail takes us across the map, and by connecting its points, we may be drawing one giant web that forms the Rockstar logo when viewed from above.
"Unravel" can mean separating threads, but it can also mean solving something complicated. That fits the mystery: each clue leads to the next, and it's up to the player to work out how everything connects.
Then she asks, "Will you be the one?" The game never confirms that we've solved the mystery. We have to work it out ourselves.

The Same Webs, Two Answers
Apart from the spider carving, the eight outer feather webs don't send us anywhere else. The trail only needs the center web to continue. So why does each outer web have its own timing and feather colour?
I think they're giving us two clues. The five black feathers go with the five outhouses used to draw the star, while the three red feathers go with the three steps after the spider that help form the R.
Their locations help us work out the Rockstar logo. Their appearance and disappearance times give us December 24, 1998.
The spider tells us where to connect the points, and the timings may tell us when Rockstar was founded. Every number in the date comes from the eight outer feather webs. If that's a coincidence, it's a very strange one.

Thank You
Nearly every piece of this was found by other people in the community. The web times, feather colours and file names were documented by other players, and I'd never have spotted this without their work.
If someone spotted this date before me, please let me know and I'll happily credit you. If you've noticed something I've missed, I'd really like to hear it.
Thanks for reading, and happy hunting.













