Capcom sued over Dead Rising

by Justin McElroy on Feb 26th 2008 12:55PM

We heard the rumblings of this coming earlier this month, but now it seems like it's official: MKR Group, which owns the rights to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, has sued Capcom for similarities between the zombie flick and Capcom's Dead Rising, both of which feature zombies in a shopping mall. In part, the suit states, "In both, the recreational activities of the zombies and absurdly grotesque 'kill scenes' provide unexpected comedic relief."

Personally, we think this whole thing is a little silly. Zombies in a shopping mall are like polar bears on South Pacific islands or cheetahs in Ludwig's den. It's their natural habitat, what do you want them to do, make an unrealistic zombie game?

Source

Tags: Capcom, Capcom-Production-Studio-1, Dead-Rising, george-romero, Lawsuit, Microsoft, mkr-group, Survival-Horror, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (67)

This is stupid. Malls make sense for a Zombie game, because,
A: It makes a statement on consumerism, with the Zombie state-of-mind being present in the average consumer. There is also the funny little bit where even in death these people instinctively go to the mall.

B: Almost all gamers are familiar with shopping malls, so it puts them in a familiar environment and they can really imagine what they might do in this situation

C: There's a wide variety of objects to make use of, so it's just overall fun.

Until MKR group gets exclusive rights to Zombies or malls or any combination of the two, an original story set in a familiar environmet should be no big deal. If this case holds any water, there should be a lot of movie studios suing eachother and numerous game developers because of similar material. Now, if the story was almost identical, I'd be okay with this, but they're just ticked off because their licensed Zombie game, Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green, didn't sell so well. Oh well. Capcom was just more creative. Maybe they should be asking Capcom for help instead of suing them.

The disclaimed says that it's not ralted to Dawn of the Dead, not that it wasn't inspired by it. And the only reason they included the disclaimer in the first place was that MKR had threatened to sue before the game was even released. They've just finally followed up now that the game has been a decent success and talks of a sequel are in the works.

In other news, Atari has announced they are suing Sony over distinguished similarities between their arcade game Gran Trak 10 and Sony's Gran Turismo 5. The lawsuit says racing around a track in an automobile clearly is copied from the previous title created by Atari.

the caption text is WAY too big for anything relating to dead rising, you should have used font size 2, to make it more believable

Stupid, I really love Romero, but really they are going to sue over this? Its a mall, how can they own rights for zombies in a mall. Whats next no games with zombies in a cemetery? BOO to this news, hope it dont effect DR2.

Totally not the same.

was that a "Lost" reference there?

tha sux
i hope it doesnt affect dead rising 2

God, that's stupid.

I'm not gonna call bs on this one. When I first saw Dawn of the Dead a few months ago I immediately wanted to play Dead Rising. I thought the game was doing the similar idea on purpose... until now.

Oh, by the way, homeless = zombies.

I'm gonna sue the Earth and all it's inhabitants.
I can do that right? I mean, no lawsuit is too ridiculous? Right?

I want pictures of the cheetahs!!

& yes this whole thing is silly!

so is the suite based on the first DotD movie, or the second one? if it's the first, does that mean they'll next sue paramont pictures for the recreated unfaithful version of the movie?

you'll probably find they were in the process of trying to sell of the license for a Dawn of the Dead game, and shat their pants when they realised somebody had done almost exactly the same thing!