Director's Cut Slashed?

Reports of Capcom's Resident Evil Director's Cut being cut have been swirling around the Net since Tuesday.

Despite the dozens of rumors on USENET as to the reason why it was cut, well, most of them are false. We talked to a Capcom representative late Wednesday to get the complete scoop, and here it is:

From the start, Capcom USA has always intended Resident Evil Director's Cut to remain uncensored, with the complete Japanese intro (with gore) and other cinemas; however, the translation was done by Capcom Japan, not Capcom USA.

When the time came for the game to be approved by Sony for release into the US market, Capcom Japan submitted the game directly to Sony.

Sony originally rejected the game because of a line of Japanese copyright information that was in the Japanese (uncensored) intro. Sony sent the game back to Capcom Japan so it could remove the copyright information and then resubmit the game.

Apparently, Capcom Japan, instead of just taking out the copyright information, swapped the intro of Director's Cut with that of the original US Resident Evil. The result being, of course, that the intended intro is missing.

The explanation for the other edit in the game is the same. During the process of swapping cinemas, that scene too was swapped - and presumably others in the game have been swapped as well.

Capcom Japan then resubmitted the game to Sony and it was approved because the copyright line was gone. The game went in to manufacture and by the time Capcom USA learned of the change, which was never supposed to have happened, it was too late.

Rumors that the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) pressured Capcom to cut the offending scenes are completely false, as confirmed today by a Capcom USA spokesman. The explanation lies in the fact that it was a miscommunication, resulting in a mistake in the Director's Cut that was not supposed to have happened.

Thursday, on its web site Capcom USA will post the complete, uncensored version of the intro to Resident Evil Director's Cut as it was supposed to appear.

Any future remedy remains undetermined at this time.

The Capcom USA spokesman reiterated to GameSpot News that Capcom is sorry that this happened, and that it didn't intend for the game to be censored, nor did it try to deceive anyone in advertising or packaging.