Wherever there’s a competition in just about anything, somebody will be out there attempting to either bend the rules or outright break them.
That certainly applies to fighting games too with one Street Fighter 6 player facing accusations of allegedly cheating during a Capcom Pro Tour tournament.
During this weekend’s World Warrior Asia East event at the AubyCup, some players including Capcom Cup X runner-up FNC|Chris Wong pointed out a suspicious entrant.
That would be an apparent Master-ranked Guile going by ばけもの / Bakemono, which fittingly translates to Monster, who appeared to be pulling off punishes and inputs in a manner that aren’t quite possible or reasonable for a human to pull off by themselves.
The clip Wong provided showed Guile whiff punishing Cammy’s crouch medium attacks with great precision on multiple occasions for example, which wouldn’t be too suspicious on its face until you look a little deeper.
World Warrior – Asia East @CapcomFighters pic.twitter.com/ZZZwKPuAMN
— FNC Chris Wong (@ChrisWong1028) September 21, 2024
Frame Assist Tool developer HatsonFGC pointed out this Guile would consistently hit heavy punch on the 8th frame of Cammy’s crouch medium punch and points to the player using scripts that are against the rules.
Scripts can be set up to perform certain actions and inputs for a player automatically in response to what the opponent or user themselves are doing like allowing them to tech every throw or Shoryuken on every jump in attempt.
And scripts are obviously against the rules for tournaments, especially official ones tied to the Capcom Pro Tour.
This cheat is scripted to press 5HP on the 8th frame of the opponents 2MP. Every time, frame perfect.
It boggles the mind that Capcom will make the game unplayable online with basic mods like giving Ryu a shave, but at the same time cheaters are playing in official competitions. https://t.co/1R72gWatbt— Hatson (@HatsonFGC) September 21, 2024
The player is still in some control of their character unlike a fully automated tool-assisted bot, but scripts give an unfair advantage over the opponent
We decided to do a bit more digging and closely watched through Bakemono’s other tournament matches to look for other hints that these alleged scripts may be involved in the outcomes — and compare to what we’ve seen out of other alleged cheaters in SF6.
Between almost a dozen different games we spectated, this Guile hit a “Perfect” Sonic Boom every single time except for once, which we’ll get to in a bit.
There’s only a three-frame window to hit that Perfect Boom to give the projectile extra frame advantage and damage.
It’s not too out of the ordinary to see a Master-ranked level Guile hit 90% or maybe slightly more of those as perfects, but 100% does raise questions.
Compare that to his following matches where he hits every single Perfect Boom, techs almost every throw, anti-airs most jumps (besides some awkward ones), consistently punishes even at max distance and relies on the same few setups overt and over pic.twitter.com/PSgCVgp9iX
— Dakota Hills- EH DarkHorse (@EHDarkHorse) September 22, 2024
On top of that, we also witnessed Bakemono tech basically every throw that came their way as well as performing very similar actions like only one of two different setups for Drive Rush combos along with max-range punishes.
This Guile didn’t play perfectly 100% of the time, but there’s more than enough present to question what’s going on here.
Another thing that stood out to us from Bakemono’s gameplay was their anti-airs were usually on point whether that be through Flash Kick, crouch heavy punch or medium kick, but there were certain awkward angles where Guile would seemingly lock up on a jump-in despite having a charge ready (that likely would have worked).
A script may have no data or conflicts in the program for these types of situations that can cause them to fail to act at all.
What’s potentially the most suspicious of everything we witnessed aside from the Cammy punishes, however, actually came from his first loss against #KK#’s Zangief.
In this set, Bakemono looked like a completely different player. His decision-making in neutral was poor, he couldn’t react to any jump-ins from the grappler at all and couldn’t tech grabs either (though could land some).
I’ve looked more into this alleged SF6 cheater / script user and came across some interesting things. Perhaps most telling is their first loss where they appear to play a lot sloppier without proper punishes, combos and reactions pic.twitter.com/97rkJdphBm
— Dakota Hills- EH DarkHorse (@EHDarkHorse) September 22, 2024
And out of the four rounds, he only threw one regular Sonic Boom, and it was the only one we saw that didn’t have the Perfect input timing.
None of this absolutely proves Bakemono cheated and used scripts in the tournament, but it does raise red flags that he could have enabled scripts after getting sent to the losers bracket to try and stay in the tournament.
Bakemono was able to defeat five opponents straight on the losers’ side including Jimini, SIFU, 1204k, gettajoe and smcat before finally getting eliminated by FrankSoa’s Akuma.
Some other causes for concern can be seen on Bakemono’s Start.gg page where we can see this is the only tournament he’s ever entered under that name with the account being created just this month.
Moreover, the player has now changed their in-game name, main character and profile to potentially try and obscure their actions / identity — though they can still be found under the same user ID.
Capcom has not made any official comments about Bakemono or the tournament in question as of the time of reporting.
They did, however, release a statement back in August about investigating and restricting players engaged in cheating as well as inappropriate chats and other disruptive behaviors.
Whether or not this was truly cheating, it does raise concerns that SF6 may need to be updated to try and better block these scripts or at least make it even easier to flag and report alleged cheaters (and to be quickly investigated during officially licensed tournaments).
It’s not always the easiest to catch, but fighting game players are very smart and can figure out inconsistencies — or when things are performed too consistently.
So if you’re going to try and cheat in a major fighting game, don’t expect to get away with it for very long.
Luckily, Bakemono didn’t make the top cut for this tournament, but his alleged actions still left six other players who were eliminated / defeated that likely wouldn’t have been if the matches were performed on a truly even playing field, which really sucks for something that takes a lot of time and dedication.
It’ll be important to see how Capcom reacts to this incident and see if more information or examples are uncovered.