How do bounties work, and can a bounty placed on you be removed?

A bounty on you cannot be bought off or cancelled. It ends when another player hospitalises you and claims it, and the wiki's 2021 capture says unclaimed bounties expire after 7 days. The 'Buy off' feature was removed in the 14 Feb 2017 patch.

How bounties work

• Each player has 10 bounty slots at one time. The 14 Feb 2017 patch moved this limit to the person placing the bounties, not the target. Up to 10 can be placed at once, and the target gets a single event.
• Any reward value is allowed, even $1 (2017 patch).
• A 50% listing fee applies, plus an optional 50% for anonymity, so an anonymous $10 bounty costs $20 (2021 wiki capture).
• Bounties can be placed on any account except developers, or on staff for doing their job as staff (2021 wiki capture).
• Multiple bounties stack on one target. The list shows one row per target with the highest-value bounty, and your own bounties appear at the top.
• Bounties are listed in the Newspaper's bounties section.

Claiming

A hunter claims a bounty by hospitalising the target, either with the Attack button on the profile or Claim on the Newspaper Bounties page, in Torn or abroad. You can no longer claim a bounty you set yourself, and the 2017 patch made claiming stealthable. Once the target is hospitalised, the award goes into the hunter's wallet, where it can be mugged.^[1]

Can it be removed?

The wiki says bounties cannot be bought off or removed by any other means. The 'Buy off' feature was removed in the 14 Feb 2017 patch. In March 2021 an officer told a player who placed a bounty by mistake that it could not be removed, and advised letting someone else claim it and then placing a new one.

For a target, the practical result is that there is no way to pay off or cancel a bounty. It ends when it is claimed or, per the wiki, when it expires after 7 days. That expiry figure comes from a 2021 capture and was not re-checked against a current page. Expiry is not the same as removal, and the officer's advice to wait for a claim does not contradict it.

An officer said in December 2023 that he believes bounties are removed when a player is sent to federal jail. He hedged, and no document confirms it, so treat it as one belief and not a rule. One player reported in 2018 that 10 bounties from a multi-account stayed on him after that account was fedded and marked for deletion. No staff reply is recorded.

The limits and fees above come from a 2021 wiki capture and a 2017 patch. Current values may have changed. Player-run services also sell bounty slots and losses, at prices players set.^[2][3]