A change to Capcom licensing policy hasn’t gone down well with the FGC (fighting game community)…

Tournaments have taken a back seat lately due to the coronavirus global pandemic. In-person, they are not relatively as easy to organise as they were three years ago. Capcom has already had to cancel the in-person finale of the 2021 Capcom Pro Tour Season, forcing an online replacement. And instead of helping out the already struggling tournaments, Capcom is revealed new rules that will put a pretty lovely disadvantage on tournaments running Street Fighter games.

They will have to apply for a license to have their games in the tournament. That’s OK, but the annual prize pool can’t be more than $10,000. That’s not much! And if that’s not enough: the maximum prize money for a single event is $2,000, and sponsorship bonuses can be up to $5,000 per event and up to $20,000 per year. These all sound like Capcom is trying to discourage smaller events.

DPG at Law reports: “Capcom will be gaining the rights to use community event photos, videos, and stream footage for its marketing and potentially other marketing material, significant licensing fees, and other benefits from more prominent events. You cannot promote Your Event in a way that suggests that Your Event is endorsed by or affiliated with Capcom or our licensors in any manner. You cannot use Capcom’s company logos or trademarks (e.g., CAPCOM) to promote your Event.

Furthermore, you must include the following statement in a prominent place on Your Event website and other essential marketing materials: “This event is not affiliated with or sponsored by Capcom. Do not incorporate Street Fighter intellectual property, the Street Fighter name, or the Street Fighter logo into Your Event name or visual advertising. For example: Do not say “Your Brand Street Fighter Event.” Rather, say “Your Brand Event. Featuring Street Fighter.”

Although Street Fighter V has been out for PlayStation 4 and PC for over six years, it has been played by quite a few people, and the reception has not been excellent. For example, Josh “Icege” McWorther, a commentator on FGC, told WCCFTech, “I can understand Capcom’s desire to collect as much on the sponsorship dollars out there as possible themselves as well as wanting to exert to control over their IP, but at what cost? Is this out of malice towards the fandom that has kept [Capcom’s] IPs relevant, or is it just pure incompetence on the part of Capcom leadership? How does the restriction on sponsorships and prize pools help the players? […] There are so many questions with so few if any, acceptable answers.” We won’t even quote Capcom’s response statement: they say that they are reconsidering the new rules…

FGC tournament organisers have four serious questions. How can these measures help smaller grassroots FGC tournaments? How does this help local tournaments try to promote themselves? How does this create a more robust locals-to-majors pipeline? Will the “Safe Spaces” rule be applicable toward any current malefactors? And to make matters worse, SNK is doing it right: they’re collaborating with The King of Fighters XV scene to advertise their fighting game that way! SNK has helped several promoters by boosting their prize pools and sponsorship amounts through their eSports sponsorship program! They only had one stipulation: a minimum of 16 participants, and the organisers had to comply with legalities…

SNK understands what they have to do. Why can’t Capcom?

Source: WCCFTech