There’s been a lot of discussion, speculation and confusion these past few days regarding Capcom’s adoption of a different DRM (Digital Rights Management) program and the implications it is having / will have on its games.
Now that some of the dust has settled and those with more technical knowledge and experience have delved into the issue, it appears as though the initial concerns over mods in Capcom games were likely overblown and misconstrued.
So what’s going on?
To help get you caught up, Resident Evil Revelation owners on Steam noticed an unexpected update that added Enigma Protector DRM to the game despite the game being released over a decade ago
The update apparently caused issues and was quickly rolled back with plans to re-implement once fixed, but users took to the Steam discussion pages and other online forums to discuss what was happening.
Revelations wasn’t the first title Capcom added Enigma to with allegedly including the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, Strider, Resident Evil 5, Mega Man Zero / ZX Legacy Collection, Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection and Ghost Trick: The Phantom Detective at least with updates taking place mostly within the last six months.
Some unsubstantiated reports began to circulate that Enigma would block games from using mods as well as alleged Steam Deck issues, performance drops and potential security concerns.
Capcom started adding DRM Enigma Protector to their back catalog of games.
This DRM is cancer:
-Prevents modding
-No Cheat engine
-Reduces performance by up to 10-15 fps -Stutters. pic.twitter.com/QSknWSuun2— PC_Focus (@PC_Focus_) January 10, 2024
This raised the alarm across multiple Capcom communities, including Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom and Monster Hunter, that mods were going to be targeted on a larger scale.
The fear was backed up by Capcom’s own presentation from late last year that stated they viewed mods as no different from cheating with the potential for negative repercussions for the company and game franchises.
And that was all coupled with speculation that this move with implementing Enigma across older games could be connected to Capcom responding to the now infamous nude Chun-Li incident of 2023 — but it’s since been shown the updates began before this happened.
Enigma’s response to questions from players just added more fuel to the fire too with lines like “Maybe you are so angered because you can’t use the cheats anymore?” on their official forums. This thread has since been deleted, but still archived online.
After spending more time looking into the situation and digging into some of the games themselves, some in the modding community are now speaking up that the initial doom and gloom was overblown.
FluffyQuack, who’s developed mods for multiple Resident Evil games, Devil May Cry 5, Bandai Namco’s Soul Calibur 6 and more, was among those who put out a handful of lengthy statements trying to dispel some of the main concerns.
According to the modder, Enigma does not impact or block file mods at all, and that applies to most common mods like cosmetics, custom characters in like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and fan-made costumes.
Enigma can, however, stop mods that alter the .exe file or main programming like trainers, debug tools and reverse-engineering programs, which doesn’t really seem to apply much to the fighting game modding community who enjoy using mods.
FluffyQuack and others have tested mods in multiple of the impacted titles like Resident Evil 5 and reported that they still work normally aside from a debug tool like mentioned above.
Mega Man players did report that the Enigma update broke the mod loader for the Battle Network Legacy Collection, but the modding community quickly found a workaround to fix that.
As for the Steam Deck issues, there are some reports this may be overblown too and may just require some settings or configuration changes, but we don’t really have enough information to comment on the security concerns though FluffyQuack states that’s more than likely a non-issue as well.
Even if the updates including Enigma end up being mostly benign, it still is a very weird choice for Capcom to go back and add DRM to older titles, since the software is generally used to try and prevent piracy and in-game cheating.
The purpose of doing so for old single-player only games like Strider and Resident Evil Revelations does have us scratching our heads, but as far as we can tell, Capcom has yet to release an official comment on the matter.
This DRM move isn’t going over well at all with the gaming audience either considering Resident Evil Revelations is being review bombed on Steam to be Overwhelmingly Negative right now despite the update being rolled back and not in the game currently.
That also goes for the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, Strider, the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, and Zero / ZX Legacy Collection for user reviews on PC, and people are obviously voicing their displeasure across the internet on X/Twitter, Reddit, ResetEra, YouTube and pretty much anywhere they can.
Adding DRM to older titles like this does nothing to benefit the players aside from trying to prevent cheating, which isn’t even a big deal for most of those games aside from maybe the Street Fighter collection and Battle Network’s versus mode.
As for what this means for Capcom’s fighting games on PC, this shouldn’t impact Street Fighter 6 at all considering that title already uses a different DRM in Denuvo.
Outside of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, we haven’t seen confirmation that Enigma’s been added to any other fighters, but there is still the potential for it to show up eventually in the likes of Street Fighter 5, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, Ultra Street Fighter 4, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the Capcom Fighting Collection, and Street Fighter X Tekken, which still isn’t available for sale on Steam after being removed previously.
The title at the biggest risk would more than likely be Ultimate Marvel 3 considering the immense progress and attention the modding community has received over the past few years to the point where there’s a Community Edition in the works now with a collection of new custom characters to use.
As mentioned above, UMvC3 does not currently have Enigma, and we’ve tested the game to make sure the character mods still work, which they do.
The Capcom mod apocalypse is not here despite what you may have read elsewhere online.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the company won’t crack down and become more stringent for what they allow to be added to their games and how they’re displayed online in the future, especially when they’ve reportedly hit YouTube channels like Team Darkside with copyright strikes seemingly for their use of mods in Monster Hunter speedruns.
We can’t truly know Capcom’s real intentions and plans without an official statement or message from the company, which has not happened as of the time of reporting.
Thanks to XWIRES|Psychoblue for the heads up and additional information.