Capcom Vancouver, the Studio Behind Dead Rising, Shuts Down

Capcom has had a good last couple of years, between the success of Resident Evil 7 and Monster Hunter World, but a few good game sales isn’t all it takes to keep a business running, and just the other day, they confirmed that they’ve shut down their main western studio, Capcom Vancouver, and laid off the remainder of the people who had been under their employ – around 158 – although they’ll keep a skeleton crew around until the start of next year to finalize closure operations and logistics.

Speaking with Kotaku, a company rep said the following:

“as a result of reviewing titles in development at Capcom Vancouver, Capcom has decided to cancel the development projects at this studio and will concentrate development of major titles in Japan.”

Capcom Vancouver, founded in 2005, mostly made the Dead Rising games, although they did release MLB Front Office Manager, the most recent iteration of the Puzzle Fighter series, and “The Bigs”, a baseball series for consoles. They’d been losing people slowly over the past few months due to layoffs, so the number of people actually job hunting thanks to this shutdown is actually much higher than 158 – although that’s still a pretty damn big number. Which might explain how, in an abnormal move, Capcom did not announce they were helping transition their team to different studios and jobs across the industry, as companies usually do.

Although, according to Kotaku, many employees are finding homes in EA Vancouver.

As for what this means for the Dead Rising franchise, probably not much. It’s still a lucrative, well-known IP, and the first game was developed in Japan, so if they don’t rent out the IP to some other smaller studio they’ll probably just develop it in their home headquarters.

Still, I’m sorry to hear about the closure and wish the best for those affected.