Retailers Take Opposing Positions on Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D Trade-Ins

You can't erase your saved data in Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, a decision that's provoked a vocal controversy regarding the rights of consumers and the issues surrounding trade-in games.

GameStop had originally started telling its stores to not accept the game as a trade-in, but a statement released to IGN said that policy had been reversed. VG247 contacted UK retailer HMV, who said it would not be stocking used versions of the game.

I've contacted both retailers for more details.

Capcom, however, was not willing to comment on any of this.

"It is Capcom policy not to comment on the choice of retailers to stock any particular product," said the company in a brief statement.

Capcom claims the decision to lock data was not made in response to used games, insinuating it's a technical issue of sorts. That's something many people have taken issue with.

"Secondhand game sales were not a factor in this development decision," said the company, "so we hope that all our consumers will be able to enjoy the entirety of the survival-action experiences that the game does offer. In Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, all mission progress is saved directly to the Nintendo 3DS cartridge, where it cannot be reset. The nature of the game invites high levels of replayability in order to improve mission scores. In addition, this feature does not remove any content available for users."

Capcom expanded on this response through its community site earlier today, too.

"There was no intention of lessening the experience of the game," said Capcom community specialist Sean Baxter. "Essentially, RE Mercs was treated like an arcade fighting game. You unlock characters, levels, etc and they just stay unlocked as they would in an arcade machine. There was no hidden motive to prevent buying used copies. It's not some secret form of DRM. It's simply the way we designed the save system to work with the arcade type of gameplay."

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D went on sale for the 3DS earlier this week.

I don't have a 3DS yet, but this has definitely made me not want to buy this game and after hearing about it on the Bombcast, it sounds like a bad deal, even new.

I'm not buying the technical issue excuse. I'm pretty sure that you can erase a save from a cartridge or a card or whatever.

How silly this is.

Fourth, 
 
Mercenaries always looked dumb to me.  

I'm gonna buy multiple copies of this game when I see a price drop and proceed to sell them as sealed mint copies in the year 20XX to make enormous profits.

So Capcom is dishonest and dishonorable. Message received Capcom.

I think its bullshit people are up in arms about this and I kind of agree with what Mr Baxter is saying. 
 
From what I've seen of the game though it doesn't seem to be very good and this whole issue is cleverly distracting people from that. So Capcom might just win this in the end.

What a joke.  Frickin' Pokemon saves directly to the cartridge with an option to reset the save if you so choose and as far as I can tell that franchise sells just fine.  

That doesn't seem shady at all.

@Agent47 said:

@fenixREVOLUTION: I don't see the big deal I mean it doesn't even have a story mode right?It's like a Pac-man game with unlockables.You play the same thing over and over again but with different bonuses etc. so why are people flipping out?

Because unlocking said unlockables is one of the core pieces to the gameplay. I would hate to jump into Diablo III with the best armor and the best spell ranks just because a company decided to hold off on resetting data. It's a stupid move and Capcom is stupid for doing it. Theres no real argument here other than Capcom made a really really bad move.

Is it Capcom's duty to provide a means of deleting one's progress on a game cart? Nope. There. Problem solved.

Capcom could use this as a chance to add something unique. Like use the non-erasable data to create a Tyrant-like boss when it's played on a different system. It would be hilarious to have the ghost of the past owner show up to ruin your high score run.

Apparantly EB Australia are refusing to sell the game now (I don't know if this is actually true, though the game is no longer listed on their website for sale). While I can understand why they'd do it as a company looking to make money, the fact that (PC games aside) if they can't make money off a game reselling it they'll simply refuse to stock it at all seems kind of pathetic.

Not that any of this truly effects me, I had no intention of buying Mercs 3D and Capcom's decision here seems pretty bizarre.

"Secondhand game sales were not a factor in this development decision," said the company, "so we hope that all our consumers will be able to enjoy the entirety of the survival-action experiences that the game does offer. In Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, all mission progress is saved directly to the Nintendo 3DS cartridge, where it cannot be reset...."

 
Doesn't this kinda contradict itself? How would being able to reset the progress hinder  anyone's enjoyment of the game? It's bullshit and Capcom knows it. >.<

@csoup said:

@Agent47 said:

@fenixREVOLUTION: I don't see the big deal I mean it doesn't even have a story mode right?It's like a Pac-man game with unlockables.You play the same thing over and over again but with different bonuses etc. so why are people flipping out?

Because unlocking said unlockables is one of the core pieces to the gameplay. I would hate to jump into Diablo III with the best armor and the best spell ranks just because a company decided to hold off on resetting data. It's a stupid move and Capcom is stupid for doing it. Theres no real argument here other than Capcom made a really really bad move.

Mercenaries isn't about unlocking fluff, it's about attempting to get the highest score possible. The age of achievements and WoW grinding has made people assume that unlocking perks for the game is the game rather than the actual gameplay itself.

He's completely right when he compares it to Pac-Man. If the only reason you're playing Pac-Man is to unlock the Super Ghost Bonus and level your Pac-Man up to 50, then you don't know what Pac-Man is.

I don't get their logic. At all. What's the difference between locking the scores to the cartridge or saving them on the 3DS in terms of maintaining an arcade game feel? Had they come up with a better reason, I might have believed them about this not being to prevent used game sales. With that kind of BS logic, though, I'm pretty convinced that they just wanted to make sure people couldn't trade them in.

Game looks shit anyway, it's the worst part of Resident Evil (the terrible gunplay) in a poor arcade style format. 
 
I don't expect to see many used copies of this game as it probably won't sell all that well.
 
...then again not like there's much else to buy on the 3DS right now.

I have neither a 3ds or mercenaries 3d so I can't really anything on the matter. All I know is from 2nd hand information from other people (which I cannot reset)

Seemed like a good idea at the time? /snark

@whatisdelicious: I honestly don't see what there is to 'not get'. Yeah it sucks, but it's not like their explanation is confusing or misleading. It makes sense.

You don't miss out on anything by playing someone else's saved games, since it's an arcade style score based shooter. (Which is kind of stupid, considering how shooting was never the reason why I played RE games, but whatever. That's not the issue at hand.)

I have to imagine anyone that is stoked to play the 3DS version instead of the home console/PC version, isn't buying this thing used.

@Brodehouse said:

@csoup said:

@Agent47 said:

@fenixREVOLUTION: I don't see the big deal I mean it doesn't even have a story mode right?It's like a Pac-man game with unlockables.You play the same thing over and over again but with different bonuses etc. so why are people flipping out?

Because unlocking said unlockables is one of the core pieces to the gameplay. I would hate to jump into Diablo III with the best armor and the best spell ranks just because a company decided to hold off on resetting data. It's a stupid move and Capcom is stupid for doing it. Theres no real argument here other than Capcom made a really really bad move.

Mercenaries isn't about unlocking fluff, it's about attempting to get the highest score possible. The age of achievements and WoW grinding has made people assume that unlocking perks for the game is the game rather than the actual gameplay itself.

He's completely right when he compares it to Pac-Man. If the only reason you're playing Pac-Man is to unlock the Super Ghost Bonus and level your Pac-Man up to 50, then you don't know what Pac-Man is.

The "game" is whatever the player wants it to be. If that's unlocking things as opposed to beating a high score, that's their experience and shouldn't be of any concern to anyone else.

The only technical issue I'd be willing to believe is Capcom saying, "Yeah, we didn't really put a ton of effort in to Mercs 3D, sorry."

@csoup said:

Because unlocking said unlockables is one of the core pieces to the gameplay. I would hate to jump into Diablo III with the best armor and the best spell ranks just because a company decided to hold off on resetting data. It's a stupid move and Capcom is stupid for doing it. Theres no real argument here other than Capcom made a really really bad move.

You win, csoup. Is it really so hard to put a 'delete' save button? Or trust the player not to delete saves when they want to keep re-trying levels? Capcom's argument doesn't hold up, imo.

Played this game at PAX. It's a very awkward game to control, not very fun in the 5 minutes I played it.

So... Capcom is pretty much lying up in here.

The Pac-Man analogy fits... But unlockables can be a big part of one's enjoyment. Like in Bayonetta, a kind of game you can argue fits as well. I enjoyed the hell out of that game, but I don't know how I would've felt if I'd bought it and found everything unlocked already. It'd still be an enjoyable game, but there would always be that nagging feeling of "I didn't do anything to deserve these moves/items..."

Or maybe that's just me.

Capcom's excuse would sound way less flimsy if unerasable saves were the default. "We decided not to add the 'clear save' feature because..." sounds a lot more plausible than "We decided to remove the 'clear save' feature because..."

Apparently Mercs 3D stores your data on a tiny CD-R inside the cart. That's the only technical barrier I could see to erasing data in this day and age.

"There was no hidden motive to prevent buying used copies. It's not some secret form of DRM."

Well, too bad, Capcom. It still looks like some sort of DRM. Deal with it and try harder next time - or not.

It's not new that Capcom doesn't show any kind of sensitivity with these issues. See Rip-Off-DLC in RE5 and the new Mega Man games. Get your stuff together, guys!

They're telling the truth. It was just a poor choice to make.

"Hey it's me your average consumer! I just bought this game all legit like and played the hell out of it because mercs mode is great! Now that I have everything unlocked though, I sure would like to start over and work my way through the game again since I loved playing it so much the first time through!"

Capcom: "Yeeeahhh about that."

Also just wanna put it out there that Super Monkey Ball 3D doesn't let you reset your save either. How come no one made a big deal about that, or did I miss that uprising? I know it's just Monkey Ball and all, but this is just Mercenaries mode on a cart.

@sofacitysweetheart said:

Is it Capcom's duty to provide a means of deleting one's progress on a game cart? Nope. There. Problem solved.

Are we in 2011? Yep. There. Problem unsolved.

@Vito_Raliffe said:

@Brodehouse said:

@csoup said:

@Agent47 said:

@fenixREVOLUTION: I don't see the big deal I mean it doesn't even have a story mode right?It's like a Pac-man game with unlockables.You play the same thing over and over again but with different bonuses etc. so why are people flipping out?

Because unlocking said unlockables is one of the core pieces to the gameplay. I would hate to jump into Diablo III with the best armor and the best spell ranks just because a company decided to hold off on resetting data. It's a stupid move and Capcom is stupid for doing it. Theres no real argument here other than Capcom made a really really bad move.

Mercenaries isn't about unlocking fluff, it's about attempting to get the highest score possible. The age of achievements and WoW grinding has made people assume that unlocking perks for the game is the game rather than the actual gameplay itself.

He's completely right when he compares it to Pac-Man. If the only reason you're playing Pac-Man is to unlock the Super Ghost Bonus and level your Pac-Man up to 50, then you don't know what Pac-Man is.

The "game" is whatever the player wants it to be. If that's unlocking things as opposed to beating a high score, that's their experience and shouldn't be of any concern to anyone else.

What if the "game" for me is the it saying "RESIDENT EEEEVIL" when I hit start on the splash screen, and they make the next one autoload into the main menu? Can I say that they've stripped out a 'core piece of gameplay'?

Who really cares? Congratulations, you picked up a used copy which already has some awesome bonuses unlocked. BE HAPPY 'BOUT THAT SHIT, CITIZENS.

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

but this is just Mercenaries mode on a cart.

This is actually the real issue here. Why are they even selling this? At FULL PRICE?

Mercenaries mode was already lame in RE4 and 5.

I don't understand why people are so offended. Used games are bad for the industry and you only save like five dollars anyway.

It still seems weird to me selling a game like Mercenaries as a stand-alone.

Why is it that when I buy a used DS game I have to erase someone elses info if its not saved on the cart?

I'm thinking about buying a 3DS for this game (and probably Zelda as well). I just... I just don't know if I want a 3DS or a Vita... dammit. Why can't decisions be easy!

I have the game. I think it's actually a lot of fun.

I've never purposefully erased my save file on any game, so i don't see what the big deal is about this one.

@Brodehouse said:

@Vito_Raliffe said:

@Brodehouse said:

Mercenaries isn't about unlocking fluff, it's about attempting to get the highest score possible. The age of achievements and WoW grinding has made people assume that unlocking perks for the game is the game rather than the actual gameplay itself.

He's completely right when he compares it to Pac-Man. If the only reason you're playing Pac-Man is to unlock the Super Ghost Bonus and level your Pac-Man up to 50, then you don't know what Pac-Man is.

The "game" is whatever the player wants it to be. If that's unlocking things as opposed to beating a high score, that's their experience and shouldn't be of any concern to anyone else.

What if the "game" for me is the it saying "RESIDENT EEEEVIL" when I hit start on the splash screen, and they make the next one autoload into the main menu? Can I say that they've stripped out a 'core piece of gameplay'?

Of course! You can complain about whatever you want and decide if that's enough to make you not want to play their game. A lot of people would probably think it's silly, but everyone gets something different from their games. I personally think removing the ability for a person to control their save file to be far greater than the removal of a title screen announcer, but if someone thinks otherwise, then whatever; it's not affecting my personal experience, and I'm certainly not going to tell them that they're wrong or "don't know what ____ is", because it will be different for different people.

Too bad you can reset most fighting games' data. So now it's either shitty DRM, or a shitty design flaw. Oh well, no one should buy this game anyway, regardless of how it saves your data.

I'm not expert but I think that every game since the Game Boy era gives the player some kind of way to manage game data.

Whatever the reason may be, either a programming or business decision, what Capcom is giving as excuse is simply bullcrap!!! They're taking away the right to handle one's data from the consumer hand.

I think the game being charged at full price is a bigger issue than not being able to reset stats.

I think the game being charged at full price is a bigger issue than not being able to reset stats.

I would still gladly buy this full price if I had a 3DS. I really love me my Mercenaries! Though the obvious and unavoidable ploy of dangling Leon at the end of a downloadable leech is pretty repulsive. 
 
Plus I've also read that that Revelations ''demo'' is like three minutes long... But as I said... I love me my Mercenaries. Almost unabashedly so.

So much anger, I didn't realize so many people were planning on buying Mercenaries used o_O