There’s multiple layers to it, but a big part is the current Capcom Pro Tour structure
Up until just a handful of years ago, it could certainly be said that Japan continued to dominate the competitive scene for Street Fighter as they had for over a decade, and over a dozen top players would be flying out to tournaments on just about any given weekend.
But even though offline fighting game majors have returned in full force, we only see a fraction of Japanese pros attending big Street Fighter 6 events compared to much of the Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter 5 days.
Longtime pro and fighting game legend BST|Daigo Umehara was recently asked about this pretty directly by one of his fans, and he gave some pretty detailed answers as to why that is.
“Have we entered an era where it’s more lucrative for pros to stream at home than travel overseas for tournaments?” reads the fan question.
“Well, I guess I have to say, ‘Yes'” Daigo responded quickly.
There’s multiple layers to this issue, but the first he addresses is how the Capcom Pro Tour is set up now.
“I’ve been wanting to talk about this actually. CPT offers a dream to shoot for, right? If you win you get a million dollars or about 150 million yen,” said Daigo.
“The only thing is if you’re wondering if everyone’s been traveling to these CPT events, they sure haven’t!
“It’s an inefficient system. If I can be a bit bleak, when you think about the financial cost, it’s extremely inefficient.”
After Covid-19, the Capcom Pro Tour never really brought back their global leaderboard despite Premier and Super Premier events returning.
That was one of the most important reasons as to why Japanese and other players would travel to other countries to compete on a regular basis.
But now we’ve been lucky to see pro SF6 players from outside of North America and Europe at Evo and maybe one other Premier.
“If the CPT rules were like before, where you had to amass a lot of points. If those were still the rules, everyone would go to these events, even when they’re busy with SFL”
“You could go overseas and have a shot at winning, but there’s more immediate merit in hanging back and streaming while training to win the next Street Fighter League matchup,” said Daigo.
“If the CPT rules were like before, where you had to amass a lot of points. If those were still the rules, everyone would go to these events, even when they’re busy with SFL.
“I would bet you on this. 99% of players would travel. There might be some who don’t. There might be some who say SFL is the most important thing, but in general, anyone whose sponsor allowed it and who had the financial leeway to go, would go.”
The loss of the global leaderboard and current way of qualifying for Capcom Cup has also made it much more risky financially and as a pro to attend multiple Premiers.
Since only first and second place get confirmed spots for a Super Premier (and only first for a Premier), anything less than that is often times a pure loss with the prize money likely unable to even cover flights and hotels while all of that has become much more expensive than it was say six years ago (especially with the Japanese yen).
Daigo says he’s one of the lucky few pros left whose sponsors cover their travel costs abroad (at least consistently), which is why he does show up to more tournaments still than most.
“But in any case, the reason people aren’t traveling is because it’s not practical to foot the costs themselves,” Daigo continued. “Either that, or teams decide it’s simply too inefficient.”
Since SF6 is more popular than SF5, pro players can get more people into their streams and content now, which allows more to make a living out of playing the game without needing to go to a multitude of majors every year.
“If you travel overseas, you can’t stream. That’s a loss.”
“The only solution to this, of course, is to win the tournament. So it’s only natural that people aren’t going.”
“If the CPT rules were like they were before [point system]… 99% of Japanese players would travel”
I’ve been shouting this from the rooftops for a while that the current format simply incentivizes players to stay home. We see SIGNIFICANTLY less international competition. https://t.co/CnxfguFSnR
— Brian_F (@Bri4nF) October 8, 2024
This isn’t a sentiment shared by just the Japanese players either, as many in the community have been voicing since last year that they’d like the global points system to return.
Daigo’s discussion now has others like Brian F and NASR|BigBird chiming in too, but it’s something that’s been consistently talked about for Street Fighter 6 since the CPT rules were first revealed.
On the flipside, this push towards regional and online qualifiers has allowed more players to attend Capcom Cup and make a name for themselves who don’t have the means to travel, including our reigning champion UMA.
We saw the Tekken World Tour return to only offline events this year for Tekken 8 with global and regional leaderboards, which led to players traveling around the globe much more consistently again, so we can see the hunger is still there in the genre despite the high costs — they just need more incentive than only the top two getting a shot at anything more tangible.
Currently, there are no Japanese players qualified for Capcom Cup 11, but there will be more shots coming up very quickly with four CPT Premiers going down over the next month (including in Japan), which is more than we had across the last three months.
Hearing Daigo imply that most Japanese players would rather stay home and stream/practice for SFL Japan is kinda disheartening
But I don’t blame them, it’s a lot of money for almost no return, I would do the same if I was in their position https://t.co/LLKSPv8alM
— Adel (@Bigbird_fgc) October 8, 2024
There is also the World Warrior regional qualifiers and finals that take place later as well, but it’ll be very interesting to see what the player spread looks like when all is said and done.
You can check out Daigo’s full video below with English subtitles to get more of his thoughts on the current competitive situation.