Sometimes in the world of video game news, you read a story that’s so nonsensical you assume that there must be some crucial context missing. The current situation with Capcom and the Enigma Protector is one of those stories, but the more I dig into it, the more I realize it is every bit as bizarre as it sounds. For reasons beyond all reason, Capcom is on a crusade to excise mods from its games, and the collateral damage of that pointless war is starting to have some strange effects.
Here are the facts as I understand them. Last October,Capcom published a YouTube videocalled RE:2023 Anti-cheat and Anti-Piracy Measured in PC Games Recommendations for In-House Productions. The video, which was produced as part of the company’s open conference for game industry professionals, is a 50-minute presentation that covers the current state of cheating and piracy in PC gaming, Capcom’s approach to anti-cheat and piracy measures, and its philosophy about “tamper resistance”, ie, controlling mods.
The part of the presentation that pertains to mods (starting at 13:53) claims that they are no different than cheats in terms of how they affect the game, and that for the purpose of anti-cheat and anti-piracy, all mods are defined as cheats. The presenter explains that while the majority of mods positively impact games, malicious mods can be detrimental to the reputation of the company, either because they can be mistaken for legitimate implementations in the game, or because the content of the mod itself hurts the brand. “There are a number of mods that are offensive to public order and morals,” the presenter explains. “When these are disseminated, the image of the product is tarnished and branding is affected.”
What does Capcom mean by mods that are “offensive to public order and morals”? Many have drawn a connection between this presentation and a Street Fighter tournament last July that was interrupted whena fully nude Chun-Liappeared at the start of a match. Given the ferocity with which Capcom is targeting modders today, it feels like that incident offers important context.
A couple of months after the presentation,Capcom started aggressively targetingMonster Hunter YouTube videos that featured mods. The takedown requests disproportionately affect Monster Hunter speedrunners, who use mods to add consistency to the game, including one that removes random spawns points. Capcom has been known to issue copyright strikes against YouTube videos that feature mods in the past too -here’s an example of a YouTuberwhose Resident Evil 3 video was DMCA’d for showcasing a modded outfit - but this more recent example, along with the RE:2023 presentation and Chun-Li incident, establishes a trend: Capcom is going on the offensive against modders.
Recently, the company has started adding DRM software called Enigma Protector to its games, including Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, and Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (after removing Denuvo DRM from it just last month). This software could be used, like Denuvo, to counter piracy, but given the age of the games, it’s pretty obvious it’s the other thing. The software locks the games .exe file, which prevents it from being edited by mods.
Unfortunately, there are claims that the updates are making some of these games incompatible with the Steam Deck. But hey, this is about protecting Capcom’s reputation, right? Though making games unplayable to shut down naughty mods isn’t exactly what I’d consider good for the brand.
GamesRadar found a threadon Enigma’s support forums where angry players were expressing their dissatisfaction with the new software implementation, to which a site admin responded, “Maybe you are so angered because you may’t use the cheats anymore?” That exchange has been deleted and the Resident Evil Revelations update that made it unplayable on Steam Deck has been reverted, but Capcom is planning to re-release the update, and other games that have recently been updated with Enigma Protector have not had those updates removed.
I don’t think Capcom cares about people using mods to cheat in Resident Evil Revelation. That’s just my intuition. Going after YouTubers for using innocuous mods that make speedrunning Monster Hunter viable does not seem like a lucrative use of Capcom’s resources either, nor do I think cheating in a single-player game is a big issue that Capcom believes it needs to clamp down on. If people were cheating in Street Fighter tournaments that would be a different story, but there’s been no reports of mods being used for that, just the nude Chun-Li thing.
What gets me about the whole “offensive to public order and morals” thing, which is what I believe this entire crusade against mods boils down to, is that Capcom is acting like it hasn’t been selling sex for years. How can a nude Chun-Li be the end of the world and do irrevocable damage to Capcom’s reputation when theStreet Fighter Swimsuit Special exists? Half of Capcom’s franchises are built on the exploitation of women’s bodies. Capcom is corrupting its own games with shoddy DRM software to fight indecency, whilesimultaneously tweeting thirst traps of Dragon’s Dogma 2 monsters with sexually suggestive captions. It cares so much about eliminating content that’s offensive to public order and morals, but if I showed a picture ofMorriganto your conservative grandmother her head would explode. Does Capcom care about obscene depictions of its characters, or does it just care about having a monopoly on creating obscene images of its characters?
Between hurting the speedrunning community and making games unplayable on Steam Deck, there’s already been enough collateral damage from this foolish war on mods to prove that Capcom needs to back down. Even in its presentation, it acknowledged that the majority of mods impact games positively, so why make this such a big deal? Surely the backlash to the DMCA strikes and Enigma software do more damage to the brand than a random nude Chun-Li everyone knew was a mod. It’s the responsibility of the platforms that host the mods to moderate them and ensure harmful and hateful content isn’t being disseminated, and Capcom needs to back off and trust that process, or only get involved when there’s a mod that crosses the line. This scorched-earth approach to mods is only going to hurt its customers in the long run.
