Two professional Street Fighter V players have dropped out of the Capcom Pro Tour Online tournament due to severe lag issues. The event took place over the past weekend, marking the first North American event of the season with over 20 different pro players.
Like so many other public events in 2020, the Capcom Pro Tour cancelled all of its in-person tournaments for the year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, Capcom has replaced them with a series of online competitions simply called Capcom Pro Tour Online 2020. Most other fighting game tournaments have suffered similar fates: even Evo 2020 was cancelled because of COVID-19 and will be substituted with an online event later in the year. However, the issue with Capcom's fighting games (and many others in the genre) is their dreadful netcode, which makes fighting other players online an unstable experience. Although Street Fighter V finally got a netcode patch after years of fan demand, it didn't exactly solve the problem.
EventHubs reports that two Street Fighter 5 competitors have quit during a qualifying event for Capcom Pro Tour Online as a result of latency problems. One was Capcom Cup champion iDom and the other was top player ElChakotay, both of whom had made it to the final eight. The two disqualified themselves after dropping out of their respective sets against MetroM, another top player who had reached top eight. Both of them cited MetroM's lagging connection as their reason for forfeiting the tournament. By default, MetroM was named the winner in both sets and advanced in the bracket.
iDom and ElChakotay both addressed the situation on Twitter after the fact. "I'm not playing MetroM. I feel sorry for whoever has to qualify like this," iDom tweeted, addressing the developer by suggesting, "Capcom please unban the grid too." Because the athlete surely didn't intend on competing just to quit, he added, "Also, I'm sorry for anyone I beat along the way." ElChakotay had similar grievances, angrily stating "If only you could've seen that fight from my end." Like iDom, he also "thanks capcom for banning the grid." They are referring to Street Fighter V's training stage, which produces less lag online because of its empty background. 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 safety net.
This situation just underlines the inadequate netcode in Capcom's fighting games, and shows why good netcode should be a top priority in any modern fighter. 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. Some people might think this was poor sportsmanship from iDom and ElChakotay, but those people probably haven't had to deal with Street Fighter V's netcode at a high-level tournament.
Source: EventHubs, iDom, ElChakotay