Capcom shuts down fan remakes of Resident Evil games

A pair of fanmade remakes for Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Code Veronica have been shut down by the development team. According to developer Briins Croft in a recent YouTube video, Capcom reportedly contacted the developers and asked them to end development on the grounds of copyright infringement and licensing agreements.

Capcom had reportedly contacted the team in mid-December, according to Briins, and sent the group a pair of cease-and-desist emails. As one of the emails asked Briins and co-developers Matt Croft and DarkNemesisUmbrella about the trio's in-game models and animations, Briins believed Capcom thought their fan remakes would look too close to Capcom's recent releases. 

The original Resident Evil from 1996 has been re-released a handful of times, as has 2000's Resident Evil: Code Veronica. However, neither have given the more recent full remake treatment afforded to other Resident Evil games, which is where the Crofts' and DarkNemesisUmbrella's remakes come in.

"We weren't going to do any harm," said Briins, who added that their Code Veronica remake was intended to be free. A large amount of the assets from that fan remake were pulled from Capcom's official remake games, including 3D models, animations, and textures.

Thought Croft admitted to being surprised at Capcom's decision, he also acknowledged that his team was "using [Capcom's] toys to create a free game, which was already creating a lot of visibility." 

Going forward, Croft said that the group would shift focus to a new project that would be inspired by Code Veronica, "but without copyright problems."

How much do Capcom's remake plans factor into this?

Since 2019's remake of Resident Evil 2 and its commercial success, it's clear that Capcom has an interest in bringing as many of the series' older installments to the current console generation as possible. 

So far, the remakes have only been for mainline entries, such as 2021's Resident Evil 3. Next year, the developer will release a remake of the 2005 classic Resident Evil 4. 

This past October, Resident Evil 4 producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi told Noisy Pixel that the idea of a remake for Code Veronica specifically was "maybe" something Capcom had an interest in. But nothing more substantial in that regard has come out, nor have there been any rumblings of a full-blown remake of the first Resident Evil to bring it to parity with its sequels.

In general, though: publishers tend to shut down fan remakes whenever they crop up, as we've seen with Ultima and Metroid. Whether or not Capcom's "maybe" on a Code Veronica remake has started become something more real, it was likely inevitable that the publisher would stop the remake from getting too viral.