If you’ve got an online video game with any sort of popularity, cheaters are pretty much going to be inevitable, and the developers need to be prepared to deal with them.
Capcom released something of an unexpected statement tonight claiming they are going after cheaters and other rule breakers in Street Fighter 6.
“[Street Fighter 6] is regularly investigating players who have engaged in cheating, inappropriate chat comments, or other disruptive behavior,” reads the opening of Capcom’s statement.
“We are taking disciplinary actions such as permanent restrictions on online functions against players who fall under these categories. For more information, please refer to the Terms of Use.”
For at least the past few months, SF6 players have taken note of other users online behaving suspiciously though Capcom themselves had been mostly quiet publicly on the subject before.
Many presumed cheaters appeared to be using tools to let them perfect parry any incoming attack automatically, perform instant frame-perfect inputs and / or exploit rankings with Master Rage or League Points.
#StreetFighter6 is regularly investigating players who have engaged in cheating, inappropriate chat comments, or other disruptive behavior.
We are taking disciplinary actions such as permanent restrictions on online functions against players who fall under these categories.… pic.twitter.com/HrcOSP7aB8
— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) December 21, 2023
If you’ve spent any amount of time in SF6’s Battle Hub, you’ve probably witnessed some users saying some things in the in-game chat that surprised you they could actually post.
Capcom doesn’t make clear what they’re targeting in terms of communication aside from the mentions of “inappropriate chat comments, or other disruptive behavior,” but they do give the link to their EULA to point to what their rules actually are.
That includes the following: “You may not take any action, or upload, post, stream, or otherwise transmit any content, language, images or sounds in any forum, communication, public profile, or other publicly viewable areas or in the creation of any user ID that Capcom or its affiliates, in their sole discretion, find offensive, hateful, or vulgar. This includes any content or communication that Capcom or its affiliates deem racially, ethnically, religiously or sexually offensive, libelous, defaming, threatening, bullying or stalking.”
Their statement also seems to imply that less severe infractions may have lesser penalties like timed suspensions from online play though didn’t confirm anything but permanent bans.
We presume that ban would be handed down through a user’s Capcom ID that would be tied to a particular service like Steam or the PlayStation Network.
Since SF6 is not a free to play game, that should make it more difficult for banned users from simply signing up for a new account with a single copy of the game though there could still well be work arounds like we’ve seen in many other games.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how hard Capcom goes after these cheaters and rule breakers as well as what they consider worth punishing, and we’ll have to see how that continues to play out now.