Resident Evil PC games are playable again, after Capcom accidentally broke them

techradar.com:

Capcom has reversed the recent upgrade patches made to the PC versions of Resident Evil 2, 3 and 7, after many players found they were no longer able to play the games.

Capcom announced the reversal to the Resident Evil 2 Remake, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil 7 updates in a Steam post(opens in new tab). Now, both pre- and post-upgrade versions of the games will be available to play (thanks, Eurogamer(opens in new tab)).

The updates were originally introduced to coincide with the release of the games’ PS5 and Xbox Series X next-gen upgrades. The patches include several graphical improvements, added support for 4K resolutions and ray tracing, and improved framerates.

However, those enhancements raised the games' PC hardware requirements. Many players who had been running the titles on rigs touching the minimum specs found they were no longer able to after the upgrade, effectively finding themselves locked out of the games that they'd already purchased. As PCGamesN(opens in new tab) highlights, the update made DirectX 12 a requirement, too, which is only available on PCs running Windows 10 or Windows 11.

Capcom has now acknowledged the problems and reactivated the older versions of the titles. In the steam post it said: “Due to overwhelming community response, we've reactivated the previous version[s] that does not include ray tracing and enhanced 3D audio. Both enhanced and previous versions will be made available going forward.”

If you were caught in the crossfire of graphical upgrades and have found you’re no longer able to play the Resident Evil titles on PC, you’re in luck. It’s not too tricky to roll back to the previous versions of the games, as Capcom has provided step-by-step instructions.

First, you’ll need to boot