[Infowarrior] - Capcom tries to kill used video game sales with the one-save game

[Richard Forno]

Capcom tries to kill used video game sales with the one-save game

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/06/capcom-tries-to.php

Buying used video games is great for gamers who don't want to pay full price for the latest hits. You know who doesn't like used video games? Game publishers. In a very sad twist, Capcom's fighting back against the second-hand game market with a game that can only support one save file — for life.

It's been confirmed that Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS is a game that once finished, cannot be reset for complete replay. According to both the U.S. and U.K. game's instruction manual "saved data on this software cannot be reset."

Basically what Capcom has done is make Mercenaries 3D a one-time play affair. Once you've unlocked all the goodies and played the entire game, you will not be able to erase the game's save data and start fresh as if it were a new copy. Consider this: lending Mercenaries 3D to a friend, a little brother or sister will be worthless because they'll only be able to continue playing the game with your saved settings and create their own.

We get that game publishers don't make any money off sales from used video games, but killing off the ability to hit the reset button is just taking things too far. It's like saying Upperdeck is entitled to a cut in my autographed Michael Jordan basketball card I sold at a garage sale for $10,000 some 25 years after I bought it.

While it can be argued that used video game sales are actually more damaging than piracy, it's still a lowball move for Capcom to make, especially with a franchise as large and significant as the Resident Evil series. Will other publishers follow in Capcom's footsteps to take a stand against the lucrative market of used video games? We really hope this isn't a sign of things to come.