The Mog Blog

In Capcom’s latest spin-off of the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, media and gamers alike are completely shocked and appalled in Capcom’s decision by not allowing players to erase saved data from the cart. Capcom decided to emphasize this in by stating in their instruction booklet…

"Note: Saved data on this software cannot be reset."

Everyone in the world are upset and complaining about Capcom’s decision to do this. Complaints and concerns range from players unable to resale the game because the new owner will be restricted from resetting the game to Capcom seemingly being just lazy in implementing such a feature.

Giant Bomb asked Capcom and they replied to these complaints by stating that “Secondhand game sales were not a factor in this development decision, so we hope that all our consumers will be able to enjoy the entirety of the survival-action experiences that the game does offer.” In response to gamers being unable to erase the data: “”In Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, all mission progress is saved directly to the Nintendo 3DS cartridge, where it cannot be reset.”

Capcom’s decision to do this seems to have had a negative effect already on resale value in Japan. Tiny Cartridge reported that Japan retailers have been pricing used copies of The Mercenaries down to 500 Yen (or about $6 USD).

Now, excuse me for one quick second but… Why the reaction? As far as I know, this is just The Mercenaries Minigame found in the later Resident Evil games but extended with more things. It isn’t a full fledged game and heck, it’s marketed as such for $40 retail. However, those that have played Resident Evil should know what they are expecting out of this package. It’s a game that is much like Tetris or Bejeweled where you challenge yourself by scoring high. Sure, I assume there are some aspects of the game where you have to unlock stuff but other than that, you’re effectively buying a used copy to just skip over all the unlocking BS and go straight to where you need to go. There is no Story Mode, there is no real progression other than unlocking stages, characters and some skills. Other than that, you’re not missing out on much on buying a brand new title.

As for Capcom mentioning the “whole unable to erase save data” thing, it’s something that no one should really buy. Just the basic concept of being unable to erase save data just makes no sense. If there is no way to actually erase the data, they can simply just overwrite the data with blank clear data.

Capcom evidently did do some weird things with game saves in the past. Resident Evil 5′s game saves aren’t saved by gamer profile in the Playstation 3 version but instead uses one save per console. That, I can see, can be a headache. Capcom also had DRM issues on the PS3 for their downloadable games, requiring players to be online in order to play the game even if they choose to play only offline content.

I don’t believe that Capcom’s decision to do this is screwing over players. No company in themselves want to deal with used game sales mainly because they get no profit from it. However, this being a method of screwing gamers from selling their games just does not feel like it is something that people should be up and arms about. If you can’t erase saved data from something like a full fledged campaign, that is something I would definitely be pissed about. Otherwise, this is like being unable to erase my data from Tetris DS… which I’m sure I can actually erase now that I think about it.

Huh… Laziness comes to mind.