Capcom acknowledges Mercenaries controversy

Publisher Capcom has said that the controversial save system used in 3DS title Resident Evil: The Mercenaries is unlikely to be incorporated into other titles.

The furore reached its peak last week when retailers said they wouldn’t be accepting traded-in copies of the game.

This is due to Capcom’s decision to limit the game to one one-cartridge save that cannot be wiped by the user. As a consequence, any consumer buying a pre-owned copy will find the previous owner’s progress on the cart.

"It’s fair to say there was never quite the malicious intent the conspiracy theorists out there would have you believe," Capcom’s US boss Christian Svensson told the Capcom Unity blog, as transcribed by Eurogamer.

"It’s also fair to say in light of the controversy it’s generated I don’t think you’re going to see something like this happening again."

Capcom has denied that the save system was in any way designed to limit the potentially commercially damaging affect of pre-owned games.

Interestingly, Mercenaries is not the first 3DS game to utilise the system. Sega’s 3DS launch title Super Monkey Ball did, though it received more or less zero fanfare for the decision.