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Capcom Announces Unreplayable Game

Hatta writes "Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS will be an experience that can be completed once per customer. Using a single, unwipable save slot Capcom ensures that a second hand customer gets a second rate experience. If you buy this game used, you will be stuck with the previous owner's progress, unable to start the game fresh."

50 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. First! by Xerotope · · Score: 5, Funny

    Everybody else must continue this comment.

    1. Re:First! by DemoLiter3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You wouldn't buy a used car...

    2. Re:First! by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I read it as "unplayable" game the first time. Might as well be true. Capcom is dead to me anyway, I'm over arcade gaming and they don't do anything else competently.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:First! by teslar · · Score: 2

      I read it as "unplayable" game the first time. Might as well be true

      To be fair, it only says that the game cannot be reset. I suppose it is still possible that it can be played as many times as one wants, just that once you start, there's no going back till you finish. So what it means for the second-hand market is probably that it would suck if you buy a partially played game since there's no way for you to start from scratch until you completed it. But it's not unplayable as such. Also, I imagine the simple fix would be intentionally switching off the console while saving, corrupting the save file and giving the game no choice but starting afresh.

    4. Re:First! by glassware · · Score: 3, Informative

      A more nuanced description of the save game system is here:
      http://gamasutra.com/view/news/35476/Capcom_Used_Sales_Not_A_Factor_In_The_Mercenaries_Save_System.php

      Just keep in mind this isn't an RPG, where saved data prevents you from seeing the beginning. This is a shooter game where your high scores and unlocks are permanently saved to the card. I suppose it's sad that you can't restore everything back to its original locked state and get the pleasure of unlocking each item individually, but I doubt it's as bad as everyone fears.

    5. Re:First! by KDR_11k · · Score: 2

      It's a highscore-style game with progressive unlocks, every game starts from the same position but there's no way to undo the unlocks and give second hand owners a proper progression through the game's features. Whether that's a bad thing is debatable but imagine being the guy ending up with Gamestop's employee tested copy.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    6. Re:First! by ByOhTek · · Score: 2

      I wouldn't be so sure of that, it certainly doesn't read like that to me.

      Knowing modern DRM, that "simple fix" would likely destroy the game.

      If more companies do this, I suspect the result will be a large market for DS card readers, that you can use to wipe the save game. They'd also work well for rewriting cards too, I'm sure.

      Capcom better hope this "brilliant" idea doesn't catch on. Pirates will love it.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    7. Re:First! by redemtionboy · · Score: 2

      You can most certainly play the game again. It's not a one and done thing. The only thing the save file will affect is the unlockable content. Meaning if you're the person who enjoys the satisfaction of doing all the tricks to get that extra shotgun, or to unlock that bonus level, you'll need to buy a new copy. The old save file leaves you without much to do except replay the levels and beat the previous owner's high scores., but if you don't care, it shouldn't be that big of a deal to you. Granted I still think it's garbage and I will not be purchasing the game solely on principle alone, but for those that are on the fence, it's something to consider.

  2. The Bickering by Quantus347 · · Score: 5, Funny

    And I thought the childhood fights over the Zelda save slots were bad...

    --
    Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
    1. Re:The Bickering by Moryath · · Score: 2

      When I first read the title I thought it read "Capcom announces unplayable game", which would only have been news in that it would have been Crapcom admitting to the fact that they haven't made a good, solid, enjoyable game in over a decade.

      The idea that Crapcom would actively admit to sabotaging the gamer's play experience and make it so you couldn't restart the game from scratch? Unsurprising. I hear they've poached a couple of suits from EA and Ubisoft who have the same "fuck you" approach to customer service.

    2. Re:The Bickering by xerxesVII · · Score: 2

      That's really clever how you executed a portmanteau of the words "Capcom" and "crap" in order to express your displeasure with the company and/or its products.

      --
      "We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
    3. Re:The Bickering by Tharsman · · Score: 4, Informative

      One important thing missing from the summary:

      This is an arcade game were the save file only keeps high scores and unlocked content, similar to unlocking characters in a Street Fighter game.

      Although some may prefer to unlock everything themselves, I can also see many would love to buy a used and fully u locked copy of the game over a new one.

      This instance of the feature does not deserve any real doom crying.

  3. That indicates a really linear game design by drolli · · Score: 2

    Would the game design allow any substantial choices, then this method would not make sense for the first owner. On the other hand, in this way no first owner can actually experience by himself how limited the game may be in choices. Should actually reduce the production cost. But may make the experience more like watching a movie. So i hope the price is similar to going to cinema.

    1. Re:That indicates a really linear game design by rbrausse · · Score: 2, Insightful

      not only linear but recognized as rather boring by Capcom - they believe the feature "replayable" will not increase the sales.

  4. I appreciate the warning by reimero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That kind of move is a deal-breaker for me. I don't buy games often, but when I do, this is precisely the sort of thing that puts a game on my "do not ever buy" list. And it puts Capcom firmly on my "do not buy" list.

    --

    ----------

    Something clever
    1. Re:I appreciate the warning by nitehawk214 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't always buy games, but when I do, I buy from publishers that are not idiots.

      FTFY

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    2. Re:I appreciate the warning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I don't buy games often, but when I do..."

      For a second there I thought this was going to be a joke about "The Most Interesting Gamer In the World"...

      "He drove Desert Bus for a month -- to show that it could be done."
      "He collected every hat in Team Fortress 2 -- but never wore them."
      "He carried the gnome all the way through Half-Life Episode 2 -- without a single saved game."

      "He is... The Most Interesting Gamer In The World."

      "I don't buy games often, but when I do, I don't buy Capcom."
      "Stay frosty, my friends."

    3. Re:I appreciate the warning by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Funny

      Was I supposed to read that in Jeremy Clarkson's voice? Because I did.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    4. Re:I appreciate the warning by ktappe · · Score: 2

      Actually, there's no end of reasons to put Capcom on your "do not buy" list.

      True. Just for the sake of completeness, add to your long list of reasons to avoid them, that they are the iPhone developer who tricked all the tots into spending $100's on Smurfberries. They have no shame whatsoever; nothing to them takes a backseat to immediate profit, not even long-term self-destruction via public shunning.

      --
      "We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
    5. Re:I appreciate the warning by Thelasko · · Score: 2

      Was I supposed to read that in Jeremy Clarkson's voice? Because I did.

      No, if it were to be read in Jeremy Clarkson's voice it would go:

      "Some say he once drove the desert bus for a month-- to show that it could be done."

      Some say you have to watch both American, and British television to understand this joke...

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  5. First Sale by EricWright · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, not the doctrine ... this policy just decreases the likelihood of garnering first sales. What a clever plan. If nobody buys the game in the first place, they've effectively wiped out the after-market.

    Brilliant!

    1. Re:First Sale by Kjella · · Score: 2

      First sales can always be managed through price. What it effectively means is that they get a cut from every sale, as well as getting more sales because people that grew tired of the game or outgrew it (give it to your kid brother in 5 years?) can't pass it on.

      If you were going to buy it for $60 and resell it to Gamestop for $20 who'd resell it for $30 then Capcom can simply start the new game price at $40 and get the first sale ($60-$20). Then they can drop it to $30 to get the second sale. They now get $70 in revenue instead of $60 and the profit from both sales. In no possible way is this bad for them.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:First Sale by gumbi+west · · Score: 2

      "In no possible way is this bad for them."

      There is the family where three people who want to play the game so it might be worth $20 each for a total of $60. They would only buy a copy then for $20. And the family where only one person wants to play the game and never resell it. They would be willing to pay the full $60. And the family with only one person who wants to play the game and then resell it (where your analysis is right).

      But they can't price it right for all possible situations.

    3. Re:First Sale by yarnosh · · Score: 2

      I don't know about you, but if I was standing in the store holding 3 copies of a game because I can't share one copy between all of us, I would put them down and walk out. That's really going to drive home just how ridiculous the situation is. Even if I was willing to pay $60 for the game and I knew that's how much 1 copy would cost of it was replayable, it is the principle of the matter. And I'm not one to normally politicize my consumption. I mean, I'll still buy stuff from Apple, Sony, or whatever other questionable companies you can think of as long as they're not killing babies in Africa or something. I'd have to really desperately want that fucking game to make me walk through the checkout with 3 new copies of it.

    4. Re:First Sale by raznorw · · Score: 2

      Except that the family of three that would have bought it at 60, won't buy 3 copies at $20, because by then, new games without new headaches will be out, they'll just skip the game entirely. And the reseller won't buy it for 40, because he only wants the latest and greatest, which is why he consistently resells his games long before the initial price has dropped.

  6. Replay value by Nidi62 · · Score: 2

    And they said new games were losing all their replay value...

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  7. Second-hand??? by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if, uh, the original owner wants to start fresh?

    Dear CapCom: DIAF.

    Thanks.

    1. Re:Second-hand??? by uncanny · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What do they care? they already have your money!

  8. Boycott it by Antony-Kyre · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do not support these types of games.

    I don't care if this is device-specific or if it's the second time the original person plays it. Just say no.

  9. Oh the irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Second hand customers will get a second rate experience, yet pirates will get an even better experience than the original customer since they will be able to manage their saves from the flashcard.

    Good job, Capcom.

    1. Re:Oh the irony by Superken7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Plus, stuff like this is what motivates hackers to break security and remove unpopular restrictions, which in turn enables piracy.
      It suffices for one hacker to triumph so that anyone can be a pirate.

      Well played, Capcom.

  10. I can't say this strongly enough. by Sparx139 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fuck. That. Shit.

    --
    Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
  11. Re:Will anybody buy this lemon? by AnotherBrian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course they will. Capcom wouldn't be retarded enough to publicize this anti-feature or disclose it anywhere on the box.

  12. Re:Will anybody buy this lemon? by tomknight · · Score: 2

    Plenty of people will pirate it though. If they actually want to encourage pirating of games they're doing a pretty good job. I now rip DVDs to my PC so I can get rid of all the crap at the beginning, and surely that's only a couple of steps away from full-on pirating...

    --
    Oh arse
  13. They left their own best comment... by Kamiza+Ikioi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "If you buy this game..."

    Nuff said.

    --
    I8-D
  14. Re:Book? by Lundse · · Score: 2
    --
    IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
  15. Re:No need to be alarmed... by Moryath · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're too optimistic.

    Some fucked-up suit with his head up his ass came up with this scene. Some other brown-nosing sycophant said "brilliant" and told the programmers to make it happen.

    When it doesn't sell well, they'll blame it on the 3DS's poor install base, or "piracy", or a dozen other things rather than admit Crapcom's been fucking up for the past decade. I could give you a list of reasons Crapcom no longer gets my money unless I rented the game to try first, but I'm pretty sure I'd exceed the character limit on posts.

  16. Re:Book? by WillAdams · · Score: 4, Informative

    That would be William Gibson's _Agrippa_ a memoir of his father:

    http://www.dissemination.dk/research/books/postcard-from-a-dead-future/

    It contained aquatint etchings which would degrade when exposed to light and a _floppy disk_ w/ the text which would encrypt itself as it was displayed (naturally this has since been broken).

    William

    --
    Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
  17. Re:Dumbest Idea Ever by techsoldaten · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In a way, it might. Cracking games is a long standing tradition and quite a bit of fun.

    Gave up on video games myself a long time ago, but I still remember the joy of circumventing copy protection. I bought a copy of Zork once, it came on a floppy that was copy protected. The secret to copying it was to cut a small hole in the top left side of the disk before putting it in. This allowed copying to happen.

    Mind you, I was never any good at Zork and got eaten continuously by Grues. I wanted a copy because I had a bad habit of throwing disks for games across the room when I lost. As far as I was concerned, I was buying the game, not the disk, and it was abominable that people were not allowing me to enjoy the game in the manner of my choosing (watching it fly when it beat me). Having a copy was about having a backup, and who were they to tell me no? /me fondly remembers the soft feel of floppies, the slight texture on the 5.5s, the way they used to soar...

    Copy II PC was the program I used to copy write protected floppies. I think Wizardry was the first one where I needed to use this. I assumed I was going to be just as bad as I was with Zork and made copies before I played the game. It took me a couple weeks to get down how to use Copy II PC - while I wanted to play the game, I did not want it to end prematurely in a fiasco.

    For whatever reason, one of the Wizardry games was protected against Copy II PC, and that made me leave it on the shelf until something better came along. I think it sat there for a year until I got a copy of PC Tools, which I used for making copies and also hex editing. It was with Pool of Radiance where I really learned to shine with that one, tanking around with a party of people with 18 for all their attributes and all sorts of weapons. I am not sure if you can call it playing the game once you have screwed with all the internals, I remember it did not take me long to get bored with the game itself but I was always fascinated by what I could do with the saved game files.

    Purhased a lot of games that I really hated just to screw with them. I had no interest in any of the flight simulator games that were popular back then, or the SSI simulators like Panzer Commander, or any of the Sierra games (that came along later), or things like Ancient Art of War. I would buy them to add them to a library, and would spend my time screwing with the disks and data files. I probably spent as much money on floppies as I did on actual games, if you can believe that.

    Fun times. If I was a kid again, I would probably buy a copy of this game just to hack it. Hoping there are others who share the same POV.

  18. Re:No replay value at all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Replaying an old game when you could be buying a new game is obviously equal to piracy. You should be ashamed of yourself.

  19. So what? by Lysander7 · · Score: 2

    Most games nowadays have such a terrible replay value, it might as well not have any at all anyways. Also, it's been mentioned numerous times what kills console game profits is buying used games, as opposed to pirating. Reason being that the video game stores make all the money off selling used games and the video game company doesn't see a dime off of it. As a consumer, why WOULDN'T you buy the used version of the game if you can save five bucks for the exact same thing, with a seven day return policy? Expect to see this and more approaches to this issue (such as an increase in DLC) by video game developers in the future.

  20. Re:Welcome to the twitter generation. by MightyYar · · Score: 2

    And your comment was insightful? Did I become smarter after reading it?

    I may be adding to the noise, but at least I'm not berating someone else for doing the same.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  21. Re:Will anybody buy this lemon? by delinear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dead right - if they make it inconvenient for legitimate customers to play the game without stripping DRM, they're basically encouraging their paying customers to go learn all the skills they need to pirate. From there surely it's a small step for a lot of people to just cut out the whole payment part of the process. That's especially the case if you live in a jurisdiction where DRM circumvention is illegal anyway - in that case you've already broken the law just to make it easier to play something you legally own, what's the disincentive of going that bit further?

  22. Re:Welcome to the twitter generation. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And your comment was insightful? Did I become smarter after reading it?

    I may be adding to the noise, but at least I'm not berating someone else for doing the same.

    Oh... the irony.

  23. Re:Welcome to the twitter generation. by Elbereth · · Score: 2

    Ah, but the role of the asshole in society is actually quite misunderstood and underappreciated. Without overly critical, judgemental assholes to shame and berate people for their odious behavior, where would we be? We'd live in a society full of care bears, where everyone's opinions were equally valid, every POV was respected, and, yes, stupid shit was said and time was wasted. Without the assholes of the world, berating people for their foolishness, we'd descend into a hellish dystopia, where AOL-ish cries of "me too!" and generic, emotional outbursts replace intelligent discourse. Truly, the asshole is one of society's greatest assets, for without him, we turn into bland, boring, and ultimately useless people, contributing nothing to society. Is he a destructive, hateful force for evil? Far from it! No, he is the crusader of all that is good and of high quality!

    Or maybe assholes just like being mean. Who knows.

  24. Re:Will anybody buy this lemon? by SilentStaid · · Score: 5, Informative

    The game has already been out for a month. It was not published clearly on the outside of the box, just in the manual (and who RTFM around here?).

    They're treating it as a success at capcom because Gamestop is paying 6$ for it used in the UK and in Japan.

    Source.

  25. What about corrupted saves? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What if your battery dies in the middle of a save? It could happen by accident. Therefore I must assume one of two things:

    1. Once you finish the game it never saves again (seems most likely) also giving zero replay/after-play value.
    2. Like most cartridge games, if it detects a corrupted save, it deletes the save. Therefore you can work around this "feature" by switching the 3DS off in the middle of a save.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    1. Re:What about corrupted saves? by mingot · · Score: 2, Informative

      I can't speak for all games, but I am very familiar with the save structure of one particular series, and each game in this series stores a backup of the save file and will always revert if one of them is corrupt. I would guess that this is not the only series where the developers take this approach.

  26. Re:Siblings... by KDR_11k · · Score: 3, Informative

    What part of Resident Evil sounds like a game that children should play?

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.