Street Fighter 6 esports has been growing in popularity over the world and Capcom wants to punish everyone for taking an interest in their game by charging them to watch the Capcom Cup 12 Finals!
On September 28th, Capcom announced on X that it would implement a pay-per-view stream for the Capcom Cup 12 Finals (March 14th, 2026) and the SFL: World Championship (March 15th, 2026). Watching these tournament finals live would cost about $40 to $60. While there will also be a free stream to watch a week later, the idea of blocking matches behind a paywall has not sit well with the esports community, including me.
It should be noted that Capcom and other esports companies charge for tournaments over in Japan. But the rest of the world is not Japan.
Top Street Fighter 6 player Adel “Big Bird” Anouche reacted to the news: “This is a very surprising and weird decision from Capcom. This isn’t going to be a positive thing for them.”
You’re telling me. The FGC has already started reacting with frustration and anger, accusing Capcom of being greedy and not understanding the fighting game scene at all. The FGC scene outside of Japan is not very passionate or large in comparison, so this seems like a strange way to celebrate finally gaining momentum in Europe and North America. In fact, it could even slow it down completely.
Not only is this alienating to the FGC at large (some people cannot afford to pay $60 to watch people play Street Fighter 6, let’s be real), but it could also rip the community apart in other ways. This could impact the possibility of co-streams, taking away the party and community aspect of watching the finals from home. This could leave content creators without the ability to share this important match with fans.
Another issue is coverage: not every esports news site is going to shell out money to watch the finals, meaning the coverage for this event will be a lot lower than usual. There won’t be as many websites reporting on the results or sharing insight into the tournament. These three things could really impact Street Fighter 6 viewership.
It’s unclear if Capcom will go through with this decision after the ongoing backlash. But it just speaks to these large companies just not understanding the FGC at all. We have Riot pushing Chipotle at us to make 2XKO mainstream and now Capcom thinks we should have to pay in order to watch a Top 8. And let’s not even get started on Nintendo’s treatment of the FGC.
I started off this year actually believing that the FGC was in a good spot. I felt that 2025 was possibly the year of the FGC, thanks to all these new games coming out and tournament viewership expanding. But it’s become a bit of a mess and I truly don’t know if the fighting game esports scene has what it takes to reach similar heights to its FPS and MOBA counterparts.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for us to stay niche. But not like this….
The post Capcom really doesn’t want the Street Fighter 6 esports scene to grow as it implements pay-per-view to Capcom Cup 12 Final appeared first on The Escapist.