Resident Evil 5′s Steam edition can’t do splitscreen

Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition recently made the jump to Steam. Just like the zombies of the series, though, Resident Evil 5 is missing something despite looking a lot like what it used to be.

Resident Evil remains a splitscreen experience for many players and Capcom knows that, seeing as how Resident Evil: Revelations 2 only featured splitscreen at launch with the multiplayer getting added in at a later date. For some reason, though, Capcom decided that not to be the case with the Steam edition of Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition. When modders went into the code to find the leftover code they’d used before to make it happen, instead they found notes from the developer about the code being ripped out in the port process.

Just like with Revelations 2, Capcom’s response wasn’t to apologize for removing a feature important to some fans, but to apologize for leaving the feature in the feature list (though Capcom later resolved that).

While Capcom feels the process is too difficult to be manageable, saying that “the game’s logic wasn’t designed with multiple controller devices in mind,” and that if you plug in two controllers, “RE5 has no way of figuring out which gamepad controls which character.”

A modder by the name of Blade disagreed, however, responding to the spokeperson’s post and explaining that “all the code is fully functional and worked flawlessly for the Games for Windows Live version.” The modders didn’t add anything, he said, but simply enabled it. The modders had to disable keyboard controls to make it work, but had no problem getting the game to distinguish between two separate controllers.

Resident Evil 5 is, of course, a six year old game by this point. It’s frustrating for fans that the game is missing features in what is supposed to be the definitive edition, but it’s also easy to see why Capcom wasn’t terribly interested in putting anymore time or money than absolutely necessary into the port. It’s unfortunate that this feature is missing but, unlike Revelations 2, there isn’t a brand new game to support here, so it’s unlikely that splitscreen will return to Resident Evil 5 unless modders can figure it out somehow.