How do you actually earn cash?

Season 02 publishes the first broad reward list — and corrects two streaks

The current official notes set consecutive Control Zone delivery streaks at +$100 / 50 XP per crate and +$250 / 100 XP per pallet, each capped at ten. BULKHEAD says the original +$50 / 25 XP and +$125 / 50 XP figures were base-design values without the zone multiplier. Player streaks remain +$25 / 5 XP up to 25, and return trips +$50 / 25 XP up to ten. These are per-streak increments, not hourly-income estimates.

Read the complete Season 02 cash and XP breakdown →

• Assault-archetype kill bonus $1,500 → $2,000.
• FOB hacking also pays teammates in the radius $1,000 / 250 XP; the hacker keeps $2,500 / 250 XP. Destroying a FOB pays up to +$7,500 / +250 XP depending on supplies held (max at 25,000).
• New rewards: door breached with the Halligan bar $100 once per door (bar uses 5 → 7); friendly FOB door closed $75.
• Capturing a hostile drill tower $750 → $1,500, XP 250 → 300.
• Role XP moves: destroying buildables, IED and C4 pay Assault XP; artillery pays Driver XP; repairs pay Driver or Pilot XP by vehicle.
• Logistics base rewards fall (player delivered $150 → $100; pallet deployed $2,500 → $1,250; small crate $500 → $250, large $1,000 → $500), offset by new delivery streaks: +$100 / 50 XP per crate, +$250 / 100 XP per pallet, +$25 / 5 XP per player and +$50 / 25 XP per return trip, each capped. BULKHEAD corrected the first two figures after publication: the original post used base-design values without the Control Zone multiplier; these are the actual Control Zone returns.
• Destroyed buildables now pay their build supply cost in cash with XP at about 25% of that; destroyed crates and pallets are repriced.
• Spotting pays about 30% less than Season 1, scales with the target’s value, and pays 25% (was 50%) when an enemy faction destroys it.
• Exploit fixes: supply-crate sales have diminishing returns per buyer, selling to an enemy pays nothing, and FOB Supplied Assist is split between assisting players.

Update 0.1.2 closes four named reward abuses

Revive checks are now server-authoritative; vehicle fly-through rewards are capped; buildable-destruction rewards scale with construction progress; and off-zone FOB pallet deposits award less. BULKHEAD says caught Cash/XP exploiters or real-money traders had cash and progression reset, and warns repeat unintended-exploit abuse can now bring a permanent ban without warning. None of this publishes normal payout rates.

Read the complete 0.1.2 economy notes →

The launch snapshot adds totals, not payout rates

BULKHEAD and Team17’s press release reports $1.28T total cash earned, $561.9B spent and 111.8M tips. It also reports 60.7M revives, 27.7M heals, 212.8M spots, 4.6M tower caps and 51.1M drop-offs from 17:00 on 10 September to 05:00 on 14 September, without naming the timezone. It does not connect an activity count to a cash amount or publish player or match counts, so the per-action payout gap remains.

Read the precise release totals and rounded graphic →

Season 1 changes two XP rewards

A player kill using an air vehicle now awards 250 XP instead of 300. Selling a supply-crate item worth less than $75 now gives 1 XP instead of 25. These are XP changes, not new cash payouts. The supply-crate purchase curve was rescaled from 25–250 to 1–200; BULKHEAD did not publish every item price.

Read the full official patch breakdown →

The three actions BULKHEAD names

The studio does not leave the paid actions to be discovered. It names three of them outright: reviving squadmates, transporting friendlies to the zone, and controlling the objective. The reason it leads with a revive rather than a kill is the argument it is making about the game — the reward system deliberately does not privilege the player who shoots. If you have come here from a shooter where money follows the killfeed, that is the assumption to drop first.

How to revive, and what the files say it pays →

• Reviving squadmates
• Transporting friendlies to the Control Zone
• Controlling the objective

“Every teamplay action” is wider than those three

Those three are examples, not the list. BULKHEAD’s broader sandbox description names eight ways to contribute: close-quarters combat, sniping and spotting, medic, building, demolitions, transport, logistics and artillery. Its later launch graphic uses a different, explicit six-role XP taxonomy — Infantry, Medic, Recon, Support, Pilot and Driver — and says item usage determines role XP. The two lists answer different questions, so this page does not relabel the eight playstyles as fixed classes.

What a solo player gets paid for →

• Close-quarters combat
• Sniping and spotting
• Medic
• Building
• Demolitions
• Transport
• Logistics
• Artillery

The Hot Zone doubles cash and zone presence

The store copy describes chasing the Hot Zone to earn double the cash. This is the multiplier confirmed by the cited store copy. The cited announcements do not give a Hot Zone trigger, duration or advance-warning timer. The February Top Questions announcement separately confirms players in the Hot Zone count double for zone presence. The board above lets you switch it on, and the payout column obediently doubles a question mark, which is the most honest thing this page can show you.

The metagame plan and what remains unverified

Earning is not only an in-match activity in the studio’s plan. Its Early Access outline describes a Metagame — a frontend that lets you keep earning, progressing and adding value to your account between matches — and names five parts of it: a Gold Exchange, Player Skills, a Challenge System, a Black Market and a Vault. Read the tense carefully, because the studio is careful with it: the foundation is designed, and it will be built throughout Early Access. Those are five published names attached to systems that may not be in the build you just launched.

• Gold Exchange
• Player Skills
• Challenge System
• Black Market
• Vault

The fastest methods are the ones BULKHEAD bans for

Patch 0.11, published 12 September 2026, adds a section titled Our Stance on Economy Abuse, and it is the part of this topic that carries a real published consequence while the payout rates do not. Abusing cash exploits and bugs brings a timed ban whose length scales with any previous bans, and a reset of cash and XP to zero. Creating content that tutorialises economy exploits is treated as advertising cheats and brings a permanent ban. XP farming draws the most serious response: the studio says it tracks every server you enter, knows which ones are farming servers, and will permanently ban an account recorded as joining one for more than a few minutes. It distinguishes testing a discovery once or twice from doing it repeatedly, and publishes no detection threshold and no list of flagged servers.

Read the Patch 0.11 enforcement wording in full →

• Cash exploits and bugs — timed ban, scaled by previous bans, plus cash and XP reset to zero
• Tutorialising an economy exploit — treated as advertising cheats, permanent ban
• XP farming — permanent ban after more than a few minutes on a tracked farming server

Published rewards still do not make an earnings-per-minute ranking

Season 02 publishes many individual rewards, but not the time, success rate, route length or match conditions needed to turn them into cash per minute. Search results and videos that rank methods therefore add measurements or assumptions not present in BULKHEAD’s notes. The studio also publishes no list of servers or routes it considers abuse. This page reports the official values and does not invent the missing denominators.

Some actions and conditions remain unpriced

The Season 02 notes are broad but not complete: for example, the sources checked for this page still do not give a standalone revive payout under every condition. This site has not measured the new build. A useful observation still needs the build, action, location, streak state and Hot Zone state attached.

What to do with a number you do not have

Editorial preparation, not a tested method. Budget in proportions rather than amounts: decide what fraction of your bankroll a loadout is allowed to be, and keep a reserve you are comfortable rebuying from. The failure this economy sets up is not going broke, it is owning one kit you cannot afford to lose — and a player who will not risk their loadout stops doing the things that pay. If you want to put arithmetic behind that, the cost half is real: the cost-of-a-death tool prices a kit from the graded rows in our database, and leaves the earnings side as a field you fill in yourself.

• Decide the fraction of your bankroll a loadout may be, before you open the vendor
• Keep a rebuy in reserve — twice, if the kit is the reason you are useful
• Check the build and conditions attached to any per-action payout measurement

Spending outside the match: the Vault and Black Market

Players show a Black Market on the main menu that sells some items cheaper than the match vendor — five bandages for $200 rather than one — and stores them in the Vault, from which you take them in a match without paying again. Buying ahead that way is a saving, not income; the full walkthrough is on its own page.

How the Vault and Black Market work, per players →

Common questions