Resident Evil Requiem Shuts Down the 'Single-Player Is Dead' Debate

Resident Evil Requiem has proven once more that single-player games are here to stay and will co-exist alongside multiplayer offerings.

Don’t get me wrong, multiplayer and live-action games are going nowhere either and judging by the 2024 numbers, in terms of covering the basis of a top 10 list, multiplayer franchises such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, EA Sports FC and NBA 2K are still kings.

According to Statista.com, when it comes to the best-selling games of 2024 in the United States, only five games were primarily single-player, and those were: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Ghost of Yōtei, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Pokémon Legends: Z-A (not taking into account raids), and GTA V (not including GTA Online).

However, you could argue that the vast majority of the top 20 best-selling video games in the US have a solid balance of both single-player and multiplayer, such as the likes of WWE 2K25, EA Sports FC 26, and the co-op focused Split Fiction.

Resident Evil Requiem Is a Strong 2026 GOTY Contender

Leon S. Kennedy in Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom

After years of waiting, Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth mainline game in the series, graced us with its presence in February 2026, and boy, it was well worth the wait. In fact, during my three years at GAMINGbible, it’s the first game that I have scored 10/10.

Judging by all the reviews from critics and fans alike, Resident Evil Requiem has been met with high praise across aggregate score websites Metacritic and OpenCritic. However, more importantly, at least for the publisher, how well has the game sold?

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, Capcom hasn't released the official sales numbers for Resident Evil Requiem, but I’m sure they will arrive in due course. Yet, the PC platform Steam can at least give us a decent indication of its sales performance.

According to SteamDB, Resident Evil Requiem has a whopping all-time peak (so far) of 344,214, and that’s only taking into account PC and not consoles. On Steam, this means that Resident Evil Requiem is the most-played game in the franchise on the platform. Its closest rival is the 2023 Resident Evil 4 remake with 169,191.

Grace Ashcroft in Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom

Mark Cerny Suggested That Single-Player Games Would Die in Three Years

As reported by Eurogamer in 2011, veteran PlayStation console designer Mark Cerny said, “I believe the traditional single-player game experience will be gone in three years.”

“Right now you sit in your living room, and you're playing a game by yourself – we call it the sp mission or the single-player campaign. In a world with Facebook, I just don't think that's going to last,” he continued.

He added, “We're talking five, 10 years out. I believe three years from now, if you aren't doing that, you are being criticised in your reviews for your lack of innovation.”

Of course, Mark Cerny is a video game expert way beyond our realm, and he’s no doubt not the only bigwig to rule out single-player games, but as we’ve seen in the last week or so, Resident Evil Requiem is the latest game that proves gamers who prefer playing solo are far from a dying breed. Single-player and multiplayer/live-action games can and will continue to co-exist.

Resident Evil Requiem is out on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.