Problems at Capcom seem to be mounting. While their handling of Street Fighter 6 post-launch has been disappointing, for the general gaming audience Capcom is seen as being too good to do any wrong. The public reception to the majority of their games has only been favorable: Street Fighter 6’s release was a massive success compared to Street Fighter 5, the Resident Evil series has witnessed a mass revival into the mainstream similar to Devil May Cry, which burst back on to the character action scene after a terrible attempt at a reboot. Now, as the year goes on Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks to be one of the most anticipated games in 2024 and Capcom has long outgrown the rough patch they had during the seventh generation of video games, both in terms of quality and business practices. Thus, it’s disappointing and surprising to see that Capcom has taken several steps back with the addition of DRM to many of their older titles.
As revealed on the Steam forums, Capcom has implemented The Enigma Protector, a DRM.
As we reported last month, Capcom has been eyeing a stricter implementation against fan-made mods in their games specifically. Calling them cheating and, recalling a rather shocking incident involving a particular mod being shown during a Street Fighter 6 tournament, Capcom is also concerned with their public image such mods create, hence this cracking down on the modding community.
But this Enigma Protector comes with severe consequences even beyond the lack of mods. It reduces the FPS of games by 10-15 FPS, many Capcom games like the Street Fighter and Devil May Cry series demand high frame performance in order to play smoothly. It also comes with the side effect of not booting the games on Steam Deck.
It seems the golden age of Capcom is indeed over, with many baffling decisions made by the company in the span of the past week alone it’s hard to feel enthusiastic about any future products the company makes, such as Dragon’s Dogma 2. These changes to the modding community is a harsh sentence dealt to their fanbase, one that is normally very active and enthusiastic, remaking Resident Evil 4 via a mod with effort many actual devs don’t even bring to their titles. It’s tragic that the company’s image crumbles like this.