A month ago, Breath of Fire III was not allowed to be released on the Playstation Network due to some undisclosed legal issues that cropped up, and Capcom’s community manager Seth Killian has provided a response on why it’s not worth the effort. Pixelitis snagged an interview with Seth Killian, video after the jump.
In short: The legal fees of trying to solve the problem means it will hurt the bottom line more than help it.
I can’t even comprehend what these legal issues could possibly be, since Breath of Fire IV was released on the PSN earlier this year and the only non-original thing in Breath of Fire III is a brief cameo of Leon from Resident Evil, also owned by Capcom and maybe one of Chun-Li but I never did see that one.
Sadly, not every member of Capcom is kept in the loop and neither are the gamers since the legal issues were completely undisclosed. A major problem with the PSN is that if something is to be released on it, the ISO/ROM has to be released in its original format without any edits. If a legal issue pops up after the game is released, such as featuring a cameo of a certain character and the rights to have them expires years later, then there is no chance of it being on the PSN without having to wrangle with some lawyers.
In all honesty I think this is just Sony’s policies having a problem in them that was probably put there in good faith, but actually gets in the way to prevent someone from fixing major problems with the game such as game-breaking bugs, freezes, or unwinnable situations. However, speculation like that is a side-effect of not being open about various legal issues that upset customers.
