Resident Evil is in fine form. In fact, it might be in the best shape of its life. For close to a decade, the franchise has had next to no missteps, instead having enjoyed a steady stream of games that have not only enjoyed widespread critical acclaim (often to a degree that most games can only ever hope for), but also commercial success to match, with the survival horror series consistently ranking as one of Capcom’s biggest moneymakers year on year (alongside the Monster Hunter series). And yet, even though Resident Evil is clearly enjoying a golden era unlike any other, it can’t escape one incontrovertible fact- it remains a complete and total multiplayer dud.
That statement doesn’t come without any caveats whatsoever, obviously, because Resident Evil has had some success with its multiplayer attempts in the past. Pretty much all of those successes have, however, come through co-op offerings, while some of the series’ biggest and most disastrous failures have taken the form of PvP offerings. Most recently, we got that in the form of Resident Evil Re:Verse. After multiple delays and thoroughly underwhelming showings, the multiplayer third-person shooter finally released in 2022, and was instantly met with near-universal criticism. It was a hastily cobbled together mess that failed to capture anything that anyone actually liked about Resident Evil, instead cynically and haphazardly throwing things together purely in the name of potential (and blatantly aggressive) monetization.
Unsurprisingly, Resident Evil Re:Verse failed. In fact, there never really was any doubt that it would fail. Even back when it released, it released with little to no fanfare, and next to no hype or actual anticipation. When it launched, its player numbers were never anything to write home about (which is putting it mildly), and right from day one, there was nothing to suggest that the game was going to receive any kind of meaningful post-launch support- much less anything that could bring about a reversal of fortune for the ailing multiplayer shooter in any way, shape, or form. So when Capcom recently announced that Resident Evil Re:Verse’s dusty, rarely used servers were going to be fully shut down this June, there was virtually no one who was surprised (and definitely no one who was sad to see the game go).
And yet, this is only the latest in a long list of multiplayer failures for Capcom’s premier survival horror franchise. Just as Re:Verse launched as an addendum to Resident Evil Village, before it, Capcom released another PvP Resident Evil game, Resident Evil Resistance, to go along with 2020’s Resident Evil 3 remake. And to be fair, Resistance’s asynchronous multiplayer gameplay was at least conceptually better- though ultimately it, too, was way too rough of a product to be anything more than a passing distraction at best, and a downright broken game at worst.
Before Resistance, meanwhile, we got Umbrella Corps, which may very well have been an all time low for the series. Releasing back in 2016, it came out before the franchise had found its form again, which means tolerance for bad Resident Evil games among the community was already at its absolute lowest- and yet, had Umbrella Corps come out even under much better circumstances, you can’t imagine it would have been much better received. It’s one of the worst reviewed Resident Evil games ever released, and as those unfortunate few who have played it will tell you, it deserved every last bit of that criticism. It was poorly designed, it was not at all fun to play, and it was, above all else, a transparent attempt to cash in on other similar multiplayer first-person shooters, to the extent that you couldn’t help but be that much more annoyed by Capcom’s cynical decision to call it a Resident Evil product.
All of which is to say, Resident Evil can’t seem to stop tripping over itself where PvP multiplayer games are concerned. The closest the series has come to being halfway decent in this arena was on a conceptual level with Resident Evil Resistance, and even that’s a game that ultimately failed to do justice to its admittedly intriguing ideas. That should tell you something about how horrible the series’ track record with this type of game has been. When it comes to multiplayer, Resident Evil needs to stop chasing after PvP trends and start focusing on the things that it is good at.
Because, as I touched on earlier, the franchise has had some success with a few of its multiplayer outings over the years. Essentially, anytime it has found any real degree of success on that front, it has been with co-op experience. The co-op campaigns found in the likes of Resident Evil 5 and Revelations 2 are standout experiences in their own right, even if they’re a far cry from the traditional single-player RE campaign that one usually associates with the series. Hell, even Resident Evil 6 can be plenty of fun when played co-op.
And then you have the Outbreak games. Releasing in 2003 and 2004, the Outbreak duology has gathered a sizeable (and dedicated) fan following over the years, and it’s easy to see why. Combining classic fixed cameras survival horror design with engaging and smartly balanced co-op gameplay, Outbreak and Outbreak: File 2 set a blueprint for how to make a multiplayer Resident Evil game that hardcore series fans will actually show up for. And yet, frustratingly enough, that’s a blueprint that Capcom refuses to follow.
The return of Resident Evil Outbreak is something many series fans have begged to see for years at this point, but frustratingly, it doesn’t look like Capcom has any intention of relenting. What’s particularly maddening is the fact that such a game could easily be designed around a viable live service model that players would actually like to engage with (if done well enough, of course). Capcom could keep adding to a hypothetical co-op game by bringing in locations, characters, and enemies from other Resident Evil titles with regular updates, ensuring a steady stream of content that, presumably, would be comparatively easier to pump out with the series’ combined pipelines.
Whether or not that will ever actually happen is anyone’s guess, but at the very least, we do at least hope to see Capcom stop wasting its resources and our time with poorly thought out, hastily duct-taped together, aggressively monetized PvP multiplayer Resident Evil games. The sooner the company does that, the sooner it’ll be able to begin diverting those resources on better, more interesting projects. Obviously, the series is delivering plenty of those in the grand scheme of things with its single-player experiences, many of which are surely in the works even as we speak. But hopefully, on the multiplayer front, the famed survival horror series will soon develop the sense to stop chasing after ideas that consistently fail, and maybe instead try and pursue those that series fans have proven time and time again they’re actually interested in.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
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