At least two World Warrior Final events have been postponed following the discovery of a game-breaking bug in Street Fighter 6.
Both the US/Canada West and Brazil World Warrior Finals were slated to play out on Wednesday, but have been delayed with no finalized date as of yet. To make matters worse, eight more World Tour Final events are slated to play out this weekend.
The game-breaking bug removes the ability for players to buffer inputs as their character wakes up (stands after being knocked down) should their opponent Perfect Parry and attack and punish with a sequence that knocks down.
This effectively grants a massive advantage to the aggressor in such scenarios, and instantly turns Perfect Parry into an obviously overpowered tool.
Level Up and BRKumite, the respective tournament organizers of the US/Canada West and Brazil events, shared the following posts on X Wednesday morning:
IMPORTANT WNF X WW2024 REGIONAL FINAL UPDATE
WNF x WW2024 Regional Final scheduled for tonight is postponed to a later date due to a non intended system mechanic bug in SF6 which can change the outcome of a match.
Tournament integrity is a priority for us so all players can… pic.twitter.com/QzieHA4o2t
— level | up (@levelupseries) December 4, 2024
BR Kumite World Warrior adiado!
Em breve será anunciado a nova data do evento. pic.twitter.com/LTNlhsny72— Ryoran @BRKumite (@ryoran) December 4, 2024
If Capcom is not able to fix this issue by the weekend they will likely have to postpone eight additional events as the World Warrior Finals for China, Taiwan/HongKong Macau, Mexico, Europe Northeast, Middle East, and US Midwest are scheduled for Saturday, December 7 while France/Monaco and Europe West are slated for Sunday, December 8.
We have yet to see any messaging from the tournament organizers responsible for running those events, but assume similar postponements will take place should Capcom take longer than three days to fix the Perfect Parry bug.
This all comes thanks to a recent balance patch that changes all 24 playable characters on both individual and global levels.
Though there was much anticipation for this patch, some in the community questioned the decision by Capcom to change Street Fighter 6 so significantly in the middle of the final stretch of their own Pro Tour.
There are a total of 24 World Warrior Finals playing out across the globe over the course of multiple weeks. This update patch was scheduled to release in the midst of this leg of the Pro Tour, meaning about half of the WW Finals were scheduled before and half scheduled after the patch.
The fact that character balance would be different for various regions is, alone, reason enough for more competitively-minded fans not to work this way, but the fact that the patch brought with it a game-breaking bug makes for a much worse-case scenario.