The Service

Resident Evil Online is paid first and free after. For its first two years it is sold once, at a low price. On a date announced the day it launches, it becomes free to play for good. From that day, no mode, map, scenario, character, or companion is ever sold again.

It is run as a live service: new seasons, new places, new events, new things to wear. The price pays for the game. After it, everything sold is something to wear, a way to support the game, or a chance to see a new place a day or two early. Prices are low. Nothing bought makes a night easier, and nothing is locked away from someone who would rather play than pay.

The First Run and the Opening

• The First Run is the game's first two years. It costs US$29.99. The Founder's Edition costs US$49.99 and adds the First File (a set, a charm, and a Dossier frame) and six months of Patron (The Economy). Regional prices follow each platform's.
• The Opening is the day the First Run ends: two years after launch, on a date named at launch. It can come earlier. It never comes later. From the Opening, the game is free to play, online and offline.
• What First Run owners keep: everything they earned or bought, forever, and the First Run plaque on their Dossier, which says they were there before the Opening. The First File enters the Wardrobe at the Opening, like any other item.
• Why the price comes first: the people who most want a new place are the people who will pay to see it early. The First Run is the bargain of early access (Seasons and New Content) made for the whole game: those who pay arrive first, and everyone arrives in the end. The price also pays for what free players cannot: The Business Case shows that a free launch under these rules would need several times more players than any Resident Evil game online has had.

The Promises

These are commitments, not goals. Everything else in the Service documents follows from them.

1. Paid once, then free. The First Run is the only time the game itself is sold, and the Opening never comes later than its date. After it, no mode, map, scenario, character, or companion is ever sold.
2. Nothing sold changes a night. No weapon, stat, slot, boost, consumable, shortcut, or second chance is ever for sale. What is sold is the First Run, how things look, Patron, and early access.
3. Nothing ever leaves. Every item ever offered, by an event, a Casefile, a release, an edition, or the Wardrobe, stays obtainable for as long as the game exists.
4. No look is sold that cannot be earned. Every item sold can be earned with Ribbons as well as bought with money. Some looks are never sold at all: unlocked models are earned only by a deed before they can be taken, and trophies only by the deed itself, so the rarest things in the game are the ones no one can buy (Cosmetics and the Dossier, Four Ways to Own). Money alone buys only access, the First Run and early access, and two marks that say a player helped pay for the game: the First Run plaque and the Patron mark.
5. One currency, earned, never sold. Ink Ribbons are earned by playing. They cannot be bought, and Patron gives items, not Ribbons. Money buys items directly, at a price shown in the player's own currency.
6. Low prices, and a ceiling. The First Run costs US$29.99. No single item or set costs more than 1,000 Ribbons or US$9.99, and Patron costs US$4.99 a month.
7. What you want most, you can earn in a weekend. Every release has a headline set that its Release Weekend pays for in six hours of play. No one is meant to earn everything. Everyone is meant to be able to earn what they want most.
8. Early access buys time, never standing. It never lasts longer than forty-eight hours. Every new place opens unranked to everyone for its first week (Seasons and New Content), and everything early access opens is free when it ends.
9. What you own, you own everywhere. On every platform, wherever it fits, and offline.
10. Online is how the game begins, not what it requires. Every piece of Survivor opens to offline play as soon as ΜΝΗΜΗ has watched enough of it, and within a year at the latest, so that over its life the whole game becomes playable without a connection. If the service ever ends, nothing a player owns is lost and nothing becomes unplayable: the game goes on, entirely offline. Offline and Ownership says how.
11. Nothing random is sold. No loot boxes, no paid draws, no mystery packs. A player always knows exactly what they are buying.
12. Every kind of thing for sale is listed in the Service documents. Nothing outside the kinds listed in The Service, The Economy, Cosmetics and the Dossier, and Seasons and New Content will ever be sold.
13. The Wardrobe is never shown inside a night. No offer, pop-up, or reminder ever interrupts a session.
14. The service spends what it earns. After launch, the size of the live team and the pace of new content follow what the game earns. When it earns less, it slows down. It never starts selling what these promises forbid. If it cannot pay for its online service at all, it goes offline under Offline and Ownership.

Conduct

Survivor lets survivors betray each other inside a night: a lie, a stolen dose, a shot in the back are part of the game (The Living, Betrayal). It does not let players use a real voice to harm real people.

• Voice and text. Every night has proximity voice, shaped by the world (The Living, Speaking and Silence). Text chat exists only in the Waiting Dark: in parties, between friends, and in a night's lobby.
• Age and voice. Every account passes an age check when it is made, by a method each market accepts; in Brazil that is never a player's own word (Legal Feasibility). Voice is off by default for every player under eighteen, and turns on only with consent: a parent's for a child, the player's own from thirteen to seventeen. A survivor whose voice is off still gestures and calls.
• Muting. Any player can mute any other player, for themselves, at any time. A muted voice is still a sound in the world: the dead and every other survivor still hear it.
• Reporting. Any player can report another for harassment, hate speech, or using their voice to wreck other players' nights on purpose, such as screaming again and again to bring the dead down on their own squad, and any diorama built to offend, with a report button on every diorama (Cosmetics and the Dossier, The Diorama). Capcom reviews every report, and can reset a diorama it finds offensive.
• What a report keeps. The server holds the last few minutes of voice near each player in memory, and discards it as it goes. Only a report saves it, around the moment reported, for review and nothing else. Every player is told this before their first night.
• People decide. A moderator reviews every report before any sanction. No sanction is decided by a machine alone.
• Sanctions. A player found to have done it can lose voice chat, text chat, or both, for a time or for good. Losing them never removes a player from the game: they still play, gesture, and give their companions calls, and they keep everything they own.
• Reasons and appeal. Every sanction comes with what was decided, why, on what evidence, and how to appeal, and an appeal is reviewed by a person (Legal Feasibility, Sanctions, Appeals, and the Doorstep Record). A player can see every offence on their own Doorstep Record.
• On the doorstep. Violence on a safe room's doorstep is judged inside the night, by its Warden, and kept on a record of its own (Survival, The Doorstep Record). It is a rule of play, not a sanction: it never touches voice, text, or anything a player owns.
• In the Night. ΜΝΗΜΗ takes the voice of a sleeper who has turned it on the others. They wake able to gesture and call, never to speak. A sleeper whose voice was never given to her wakes the same way.

What the Record Shows

Capcom's own history with Resident Evil, and the industry around it, shows what players have accepted and what they have refused. Each promise above answers one of these.

Year	Game	What was sold	How players took it	What Resident Evil Online does instead
2003–2011	Resident Evil Outbreak and File #2	Four-player online co-op on PlayStation 2, through a network adapter; the first file's European release shipped without online play	The official servers closed on 31 December 2007 in North America and 30 June 2011 in Japan, and the online game went with them until fans restored it in 2014	Every piece opens offline within a year, and if the service ends, nothing goes dark (Offline and Ownership)
2009	Resident Evil 5	A Versus mode sold for US$5, built from assets already on the disc	Players resented paying to unlock what they had already bought	Nothing already made is ever sold as a key. The First Run sells a whole game, and early access sells time
2022	Fall Guys (Mediatonic)	A paid game from 2020 that went free to play in June 2022	50 million players within two weeks of going free	The Opening is planned and dated from the first day
2022–2025	Resident Evil Re:Verse	A multiplayer game packed in with Village, delayed past Village's launch, sustained by a premium pass	Its concurrent players fell from about two thousand in its first month to under a hundred within months. Its DLC was pulled from sale in March 2025 and its servers shut down on 29 June 2025	If the service ends, the game and everything owned stay, offline
2023	Resident Evil 4	Weapon upgrade tickets at US$2.99 each, added two weeks after launch	Players felt misled by the timing and saw it as selling progress	Nothing sold changes play, and every kind of thing for sale is listed from the start
2023	Resident Evil 4	Separate Ways at US$9.99, released the same day as a free Mercenaries update that added Ada Wong and Albert Wesker	Paid content arrived beside free content	New content is always free, and only the wait before it is sold
2023	Exoprimal	A US$60 game with a battle pass and cosmetics	Peaked at 4,522 players on Steam at launch; new content ended after four seasons, in July 2024	A US$29.99 price, no pass for sale, and a fixed date when the game turns free
2024	Dragon's Dogma 2	Consumables and conveniences at US$1–5 in a full-price game	Steam reviews fell to Mostly Negative, 34% positive, at launch	No consumables, conveniences, or boosts, ever
2024	Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead)	A US$40 game whose Warbonds, its passes, never expire	Praised for the absence of time pressure; 20 million copies sold by January 2026	A low price first, and Casefiles that never close (Seasons and New Content)
2024	EU consumer authorities (CPC Network)	Seven principles for in-game currencies, among them that prices be shown in real money	—	Ribbons are never sold, and money buys items at a visible price
2025	Monster Hunter Wilds	The most sought-after outfits sold in packs, one at US$32.95; outfits shown in event trailers had to be bought to keep	Players objected to paying for what an event had shown them	Event items are earned in the event and stay buyable afterwards, under the price ceiling

References: Wikipedia, Resident Evil Outbreak and Resident Evil Outbreak: File 2; VGC, "Resident Evil 4 remake has added microtransactions to upgrade weapons quicker"; Engadget, "Capcom defends charging for Resident Evil 5 'Versus' DLC" (2009); MP1st, Separate Ways and Mercenaries update announcement; Insider Gaming and TheSixthAxis on the Re:Verse shutdown; Game World Observer and KitGuru on Exoprimal; Shacknews on Fall Guys; Windows Central on Dragon's Dogma 2's launch reviews; GFinity on Monster Hunter Wilds cosmetics; Destructoid on Helldivers 2 Warbonds and Alinea Analytics on its sales; Linklaters TechInsights on the CPC principles.