Capcom claim there was no “malicious intent” over Resident Evil: The Mercenaries save file restriction
Capcom is one the most respected video game publishers on the market, having gifted franchises such as Street Fighter and the Resident Evil series to the gaming world. However, Capcom came under a fair amount of criticism from fans over the save restriction
feature on its latest Resident Evil title.
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries is the first Resident Evil game on, Nintendo’s handheld portable gaming device, the 3DS. Based on the ‘Mercenaries’ game mode from Resident Evil 5, players are tasked with surviving as long as they possibly can, against both
the clock, hordes of zombies and Tyrants, which are the in-game bosses.
Fans of the series were outraged over one feature which Capcom had implemented: the save system. In what was an industry first, the publisher decided to restrict users from deleting previous save files of the game.
What this meant was that if anyone purchased a used copy of the game for the 3DS, he, or she, would also have the saved files of the game’s previous owner. While this may not sound like too big an issue, it is, and is down to the fact that Capcom restricted
the deletion of the game save file. In simpler terms, gamers cannot delete the previous owners save files, or start the game from scratch.
In fact, one could compare it to the real life version of buying a used car; the car will not reset itself into a shiny, brand new version of itself, but rather remain unchanged from whatever the previous owner did with it.
However, there is hope of a silver lining for future Capcom games, though sadly none for Resident Evil: The Mercenaries, with the publisher stating they realized that the move did not go down too well with the fans.
Christian Svensson, the Senior Vice President of Capcom US, explained that they did not have any malicious intent, “I think it's fair to say there was never quite the malicious intent that the conspiracy theorists out there would have you believe.”
Svensson went one step further and admitted that Capcom were unlikely to repeat a similar move in the future. “I think it's also fair to say that in light of the controversy it's generated, I don't think you're going to see something like this happening
again.”
While the news is a relief for fans of the Capcom series, it still does little to appease the outraged Resident Evil: The Mercenaries fans who will have to live with both a lower resale value as well as another gamers’ saved files.
Which makes one wonder, where is LulzSec and the hacking community when you need them?
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