Disastrous Resident Evil game gets pulled offline after less than three years

Less than three years after launch, Resident Evil Reverse is dead. Capcom has now taken the multiplayer spinoff offline, with no signs of it ever coming back. Taking up arms as heroes and villains from across the RE saga, Reverse was a solid idea that never managed to find an audience. If you were one of the few players who enjoyed Reverse and you're sad to see it go, at least you've now got Resident Evil 9 to look forward to.

Capcom has been trying to make a multiplayer Resident Evil spinoff work for years. In the last two decades, we've had Outbreak, Operation Raccoon City, Resistance, and Reverse, with every single one struggling to take flight. To get the game in as many hands as possible, Capcom even packaged Reverse with copies of RE Village, but wound up delaying it by over a year.

When Reverse finally launched, it sank like a stone. As of writing, it sits at a 'mostly negative' Steam reception, and has struggled to break even 100 concurrent players on Valve's platform. Despite Capcom's ambitious idea, it never really had a chance of making it onto our best multiplayer games list.

Resident Evil Reverse's real demise started earlier this year, though, when Capcom announced it was shutting the game down. On Monday March 3, it was removed from sale, alongside all purchasable DLC. "Resident Evil Reverse was developed in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Resident Evil series, and your overwhelming support for the game has far exceeded our expectations since the time of its release," Capcom said at the time.

"Now that we've reached a new turning point for the series, we feel that Resident Evil Reverse has served its original, celebratory purpose admirably."

Then, on Sunday June 29, RE Reverse was fully shut down. This means you're no longer given a copy alongside a purchase of Resident Evil Village. Even if you do have it, however, Capcom has now made the game completely unplayable. This means that Reverse was online for less than three years before its unceremonious demise.

Reverse might be gone, but the series itself is more alive than ever. The Resident Evil 9 release date is officially on the way early next year, after a surprise announcement at Summer Game Fest - our man on the ground Jamie also got to check out an early gameplay preview of it. Capcom is continuing the survival horror experience, with you playing as Grace Ashcroft (the daughter of Outbreak's Alyssa Ashcroft) in either first or third-person. It looks like we're even going back to Raccoon City, or what's left of it.

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