There's probably no right way to nix the sequel to a beloved cult franchise, but Capcom's recent mixed messages regarding the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 certainly haven't helped the company's cause. Comments made by Capcom Europe further attracted negative attention from spurned fans.

A Capcom Europe tweet seemed to claim that the response to the dev room, a community project meant to get fans involved in creating and choosing assets, was too weak to press on with the project. "Unfortunately so few fans took part in the creation of the game," the tweet read. "It was felt the project was not worthwhile."

Disappointed fans took this to mean they were being blamed. Many pointed out that the also-canceled Prototype Version was meant to gauge interest, and expressed intent to purchase it to show their support. Some snarkily pointed to Capcom's own dev room video, which says participation in the dev room was not expected--"Of course, it's OK to just hang back and watch too!"

The rep has since clarified that it meant Capcom itself didn't do enough to spur interest in the dev room initiative. Still, the damage had been done, and other territories distanced themselves from the comments. Capcom US senior VP Christian Svensson commented in a Capcom Unity thread, "As far as the Capcom Europe thing, I'm not sure what that's about. I do know that the European fanbase for MM in general is far smaller than NA or Japan."

Svensson reassured fans that Mega Man is important to the brand, and says he brought up the response to the cancellation to his bosses in Japan. It is hard to tell how Capcom feels about Mega Man these days, though. The series, and Legends in particular, was the brainchild of Keiji Inafune, who left the company after making some harsh comments about the company and Japanese game development in general.

Since then, both Mega Man Universe and Legends 3 were canceled, and there are currently no announced Mega Man games slated for release from Capcom. They even left him out of the newly-revealed Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, explaining that the character wasn't among the "top requests" from gamers. In spite of fan fervor, it seems Capcom doesn't think the series is popular anymore.

If you're interested in a bit of Internet activism, though, you can Like the "100,000 Strong for Bringing Back Mega Man Legends" group on Facebook. So far it's up to 13,000 members, so it still has quite a bit more to go before it hits its goal number.