Pumpkin eater
While some of us grind on the daily to try to refine our skills in the hopes of one day having even a semblance of the abilities of Evo 2024 winner FLY|Punk, others, like AkumaMatata, just cheat.
Streamer and professional player SmugDaBeast ran into the disreputable player recently and recorded the footage to share with the rest of us. It wound up being the worst of both worlds as not only does the cheat-utilizing player get exposed, he doesn’t even win.
We have unfortunately seen a handful of online Street Fighter 6 players follow in the steps of the late, great Eddie Guerrero in their quest for illegitimate status on the game’s leaderboards. A player named Burnout Billy was exposed while facing Phenom back in April while another named CaJurimmi was spotted in March.
It seems Capcom has not been able to put an end to those programming their characters to perform immediate and perfect responses. As Smug begins his match against AkumaMatata (who boasts a curious 15 game win streak) the two footsie about for a bit before Smug launches into a crouching medium punch that gets perfect parried. Not unheard of, but somewhat surprising.
The same button is perfect parried again just a few seconds later, meaning AkumaMatata immediately has really good reads on that button, or something fishy is up. More fishiness transpires when the Akuma times his standing heavy kick, a move with 13 frames of start up, to catch Dee Jay’s neutral Drive Rush.
Smug gives his opponent the benefit of the doubt for a while, but the evidence starts to become undeniable. That said, the hacks the cheater uses do become predictable, and Smug is a seasoned player who begins to adapt in real time.
The streamer gains the upper hand and goes as far as to manipulate his foe using the very cheats he’s trying to abuse, and as one might expect, AkumaMatata further shows poor character by rage quitting during the level 3 animation that would lead to a final KO.
This kind of thing happens, but you can get the edge on cheaters by checking out Broski’s guide to identifying them in Street Fighter 6.