Unless it’s official mods, you might as well be cheating…
If a game is on PC then modding it is a possibility… It’s been like that for years and more than likely will continue as such. There are a variety of mods for games. Some adding difficulties, changing environments, adding new content, and some even fixing issues the game has that developers weren’t bothered with fixing.
Modding games is a two-way street, with some developers entirely happy to let Gamers create mods for the games. Look at the Steam workshop where you can find thousands upon thousands of user-created mods for an enormous library of games supporting it. Then some developers do not like the idea at all. It seems that Capcom has taken the latter street, standing firmly against user-created mods.
Capcom has created some of the best games throughout the years with impressive franchises such as the Monster Hunter series, Resident Evil, and Devil May Cry. Back in the days of Games for Windows Live, Resident Evil 5 came out on that platform. Later on, when that platform was scrapped it left your Steam copy of Resident Evil 5 with constant crashing where it was pretty much unplayable for some. Capcom’s had no news at the time about patching it or fixing it making the game playable again.
A Steam user by the name of 風 竜 Syndeh went and created an unofficial patch that fixed the problem making the game playable again. This is an example of how modders actually benefit the Gaming community. It was only around about the 28th of February this year that Capcom eventually announced a patch that would officially fix the game.
However, that patch came years too late for those who were actively playing the game, especially considering several new Resident Evil titles were released since then.
Capcom shared a presentation on their Capcom R&D YouTube channel. In their presentation, they discuss cheating and piracy on the PC platform and the impact it has on the industry. It is also here where they mentioned that to them mods are the same as cheats, and that they are part of the problem.
At about 14 minutes into the presentation, Capcom remarks that unofficial mods are “no different” than cheats. “All mods are defined as cheats, except when they are officially supported,” they said. “What they are doing internally is no different than cheating.”
They also added that they aren’t entirely against unofficial mods being used by players. They acknowledged that “the majority of mods can have a positive impact on the game.” Players use mods to add and change their experiences in the game, enhancing it or giving them a different experience. However, from a business perspective, they added mods “can be detrimental”.
As a lot of us have seen, some mods are amazing, and then some are not so amazing, and then there are those unique mods such as NSFW ones that are always sought after for any game that can be modded these days.
Capcom’s referee here is that these mods can cause reputation damage and when mods break the game, support tickets are created to get it fixed, which increases their support staff workloads. Here they argued that these issues can lead to much bigger issues such as delays in game production and increased development costs.
If you look at it as a whole, they have reasonable concerns, that’s true. However, their view on all mods falling into the same category doesn’t spell good for the future of nodding and their games. Regardless of what anyone creates, good and bad can come from it. It’s always down to how the user is going to go about it.