Capcom Vancouver, the studio behind the popular Dead Rising franchise, is officially joining the land of the dead.
Capcom announced that their Vancouver-based studio will be shutting down and that all projects from the studio will be terminated. A Capcom representative told Kotaku that they reviewed the titles in development and “decided to cancel the development projects” and will “concentrate on development of major titles in Japan.”
Capcom Vancouver was founded back on July 4, 2005, under the name Blue Castle Games. The studio worked on several successful sports games, such as The Bigs and MLB Front Office Manager in addition to Dead Rising. Following the release of Dead Rising 2 in 2010, Blue Castle was bought by Capcom and renamed Capcom Vancouver.
The closure doesn’t come as a complete shock, as back in February, the studio announced a series of layoffs which affected around 30 percent of its staff. At the time, Capcom released a statement saying that they were committed to working hard to “support the recent release of Puzzle Fighter for mobile and is dedicated to its flagship Dead Rising series.”
Since their February layoffs, Puzzle Fighter has seen their app yanked off of the App Store and on July 31st their servers shut down. As for Dead Rising, it is unclear as to what the future will hold for the title and whether it will live on. The fifth instalment in the Dead Rising franchise was leaked back in the summer of 2017, but since then there has been no new information or gameplay shown.
It is possible that the franchise will find new life in the future, but for now, it doesn’t look like the series will be rising anytime soon.
