Over the past couple of years Capcom has proved that it knows its way around a remake. Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 put genuine scares back into the classic survival horror franchise, and next year's Resident Evil 4 looks equally brilliant.
Unfortunately, Capcom has quietly shut down two remakes that fans have been begging for. Reworked versions of Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Code Veronica have been cancelled at the request of Capcom.
Developer Briins Croft explained in a recent YouTube video that Capcom recently got in touch with the developers of these respective fan projects and asked them to stop. Capcom is well within its rights to do this, of course, and fan projects get shut down all the time. Even so, it always hurts.
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Capcom is said to have contacted the team in mid-December, sending through a pair of cease-and-desist emails. One of the emails asked Briins and co-developers Matt Croft and DarkNemesisUmbrella about the in-game models and animations they were using, leading Briins to suspect Capcom thought their fan remakes looked too close to the real thing.
While the original Resident Evil has had a few remakes in its time, Code Veronica has long been crying out for one. Given that Capcom seemingly has no plans to make one, Briins and his team believed they could step in.
"We weren't going to do any harm," said Briins, who stressed their Code Veronica remake was going to be free. It is worth noting, however, that many of the assets being used in the remake had been pulled from Capcom's official remakes.
Briins acknowledged that the team were "using [Capcom's] toys to create a free game, which was already creating a lot of visibility."
Croft added that the team will take everything they've built and find a way to work it into a new game that is free of any potential copyright issues.
Topics: Resident Evil, Capcom