PC games and modding go hand in hand, and as much as players love to be able to modify games, adding new fixes to run the game smoothly and bringing new features eventually makes the games more interesting. However, Capcom doesn’t agree with that and has shared its stance on this topic, calling all PC game mods “no different” from cheating.
It’s hard to say one doesn’t enjoy the wild things mods bring to a game, whether it is Thomas the Tank Engine in Skyrim, Nicolas Cage replacing the flashlight in Starfield, and more.
Capcom Slams PC Game Mods, Coins It as Cheating
Capcom R&D YouTube channel shared its stance on PC mods with a video titled “Anti-Cheat and Anti-Piracy Measures in PC Games Recommendations for In-House Production,” and it is after every modder. Street Fighter developer shared the video as part of an open conference that was hosted last month and believes that if players are using unofficial mods, they are cheating.
The studio warned the developers of “reputation damage caused by malicious mods” and added that “all mods are defined as cheats, except when they are officially supported” for its anti-cheat and anti-piracy purposes because they are “impossible to distinguish from cheat tools, implementation-wise.” Capcom stated:
Mods are popular with users because they allow them to add or change various features to an existing game. However, for the purposes of anti-cheat and anti-piracy, all mods are defined as cheats.
Capcom is not entirely wrong with its stance on mods here since it’s quite hard to distinguish between cheats and mods in multiplayer games that allow modding but block cheating. It also admitted that although the majority of mods can have a “positive impact,” allowing players to change or add something new to the game, some are just detrimental to the company’s image and may cause “reputational damage.” Capcom said:
There are a number of mods that are offensive to public order and morals. When these are disseminated, the image of the product is tarnished and branding is affected. Also, these offensive mods may be mistaken for legitimate implementations and can cause reputational damage.
While Capcom doesn’t mention any “offensive” mods, it is hinting at the Corner2Corner tournament incident when a mod turned Chun Li nude in a fight with Kimberley, and the organizers had to apologize. The mod was installed on the host’s PC and left everyone baffled there. It was amazing to many anyway, as the video shared on social media got some serious traction. So much for being morally offensive.
Other instances of such offensive mods include Resident Evil‘s Leon S. Kennedy in a thong and Nemesis in beach trunks; while that might have been fun, Capcom’s mod police is here to curb that. It also mentioned that mods “can be mistaken for legitimate implementations,” causing bad publicity.
Capcom also warned developers that players using mods can accidentally cause their games to break and will want to contact customer support to help them with it, which will eventually conclude that developers cannot help with any issues caused by modding, which is a waste of time and resources that is meant to “create high-quality games.”
So basically, Capcom is going to give you the boot in case you break your game modding. Considering how mods work, it is highly unlikely that anyone blames Capcom for putting nude fighters in the game or giving Leon a thong, but it is still worrying to see cheats and mods in the same bracket.
Mods always make things better and more fun for the players, and seeing this company from a studio like Capcom, it’s not going to be easy to mod in its future games, even if the majority of them are harmless in most of its games, or it may just outright block it.
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