'Street Fighter V' Players Quit Capcom Pro Tour Citing Lagging Issues

At the recently held Capcom Pro Tour Online tournament event over the weekend, two professional “Street Fighter V” players dropped out citing severe lag issues.

Over 20 different players participated in the Capcom Pro Tour Online 2020 marked the first North American event of the season. Like several other public events of the past few months, all in-person tournaments have been canceled by Capcom as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead, Capcom came up with a series of online competitions to keep their players engaged. Other fighting game tournaments have been canceled, including Evo 2020, and will instead be substituted with an online event to be announced later in the year.

The main issue facing Capcom’s (and several others’) fighting games in the genre though is their dreadful netcode that often makes fighting other players online an iffy and unstable experience at best. Although “Street Fighter V” finally got a netcode patch after years of fan demand, it didn't completely solve the problem.

In a Capcom Pro Tour Online tournament match between users iDom and MetroM, EventHubs reports that it looked like iDom's Poison was efficiently controlling the pacing of the match against MetroM's Vega in the top eight. Eventually, MetroM ended up securing a lead with a series of command grabs.

The game commentators were then disconnected from spectating, forcing them to wait for more information before they could relay how to proceed next. It then turned out that iDom had opted to drop from the tournament as the connection was unstable. "iDom is apparently saying that MetroM is too laggy and he cannot play," said commentator Rynge.

As a result, iDom forfeited from the tournament and was eliminated from the losers' bracket. MetroM and his Vega would then go on to play against ElChakotay's R. Mika. Later, top player ElChakotay’s match against MetroM ended up with the former’s own forfeiture as a result of their own lagging issues. After the second match was concluded, ElChakotay would leave the lobby and forfeit the set, says EventHubs.

Both players addressed their forfeitures via Twitter:

By default, MetroM was named the winner in both sets and advanced in the bracket. Despite forfeiting the qualifier, iDom is already guaranteed a spot at Capcom Cup 2020 after winning Capcom Cup 2019. ElChakotay, on the other hand, doesn't have that same safety net.

Without the previously mentioned good netcode in any modern fighting game, issues like these are likely going to keep happening. Most of the former main-stage games were stricken from the lineup for Evo's 2020 online event because of their delay-based netcode, and now only games with superior rollback netcode will be there says ScreenRant.