Artist says Capcom stole her photos for Resident Evil, Devil May Cry games in lawsuit

Capcom games like Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry allegedly used unlicensed copyrighted photos extensively in its games to build out environments, details, and even the Resident Evil 4 logo, according to a new lawsuit filed Friday.

Designer Judy A. Juracek filed her initial complaint in a Connecticut court on Friday. In the lawsuit, she alleged that Capcom used photos from her copyrighted book, Surfaces, in multiple games, including Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry, and other Capcom games. Surfaces is a collection of 1,200 photographs of textures that Juracek photographed herself; the book is intended to be used for “visual research” for artists, architects, and designers, according to the book’s description. It was originally published in 1996. The collection comes with a CD-ROM of the images — but Juracek said she requires people to license images from her for commercial use by contacting her directly. Juracek said Capcom never contacted her for a license.

Juracek pointed out at least 80 photographs that are used in different scenarios across Capcom’s games, with more than 100 pages of documentation. One instance called out in the lawsuit is regarding a shattered glass texture used in the Resident Evil 4 logo.

Image: Judy A. Juracek/Capcom via court documents

Juracek said she took the photo of glass in Italy. “It is hard to imagine that Juracek would take a photo of shattered glass in Italy and interior mansion door designer and that Capcom artists would reproduce the exact same pattern of shattered glass in a logo and interior design without benefit of Juracek’s photographs,” her lawyer said in the lawsuit.

In more than 100 pages of supporting case documents, Juracek pointed out more than 200 instances of her photographs allegedly being used in Capcom’s games. This includes everything from marbled textures to ornate sculptural details that are recognizable and abundant in Capcom games.

Image: Judy A. Juracek/Capcom via court documents

Part of Juracek’s evidence comes from the 2020 Capcom data breach, which happened in November. In that leak, Resident Evil Village’s launch plans were prematurely revealed, and personal information for hundreds of thousands of people had been compromised, including customers, shareholders, and employees, Capcom said. Capcom reportedly received a ransom note in the attack, before information was leaked online. That information included some “high resolution images of artwork used in Resident Evil and other games,” Juracek said.

“The file names for at least one of the images from the Capcom hacked files are the same file names as those used on the [Surfaces] CD-ROM,” she alleged. The lawsuit shows a metal texture that was labeled “ME009” on Juracek’s CD-ROM, and labeled the same in the Capcom folders.

Image: Judy A. Juracek/Capcom via court documents

In the lawsuit, Juracek noted that Capcom was also recently accused of copying Dutch filmmaker Richard Raaphorst’s monster designs for the new Resident Evil Village game. Raaphorst found out about the allegedly stolen design after fans contacted him about one of the characters from his film Frankenstein’s Army being the basis for Village’s propeller-headed bad guy, Sturm, he told Eurogamer.

Juracek’s lawyers are asking the court to award her up to $12 million in damages on a count of copyright infringement. She’s also seeking damages for “false copyright mana

gement and removal of copyright management:,” $2,500 to $25,000 for each used photograph. Neither Capcom nor Juracek’s lawyer has responded to Polygon’s request for more information.

The full complaint is available below.