Street Fighter V Player Base Upset Over In-Game Ads

As they announced a week ago, Capcom has now included adds in Street Fighter V. They appear on character costumes, on the stages themselves, and even in the loading screens. You can opt out of seeing the ads, but that undercuts the amount of in-game currency you earn, which the game is already stingy with. Needless to say, the fan base is somewhat less than overjoyed about said turn of events.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that fighting games advertising themselves in-game are not a new concept. Heck, I recently got my hands on Mortal Kombat XL, and a quarter of the main menu is taken up with ads about in-game events and things I refuse to buy from the PlayStation store. It’s annoying, but it’s relatively easy to ignore, since they go away once I exit the main menu.

However, what Capcom has done with Street Fighter V is a different beast altogether. The situation is way more problematic. I mean, when the ads keep blaring at you during the actual match, I bet it gets much more painful and real fast. If we also take into account the fact that these ads have been plopped into the game after the fact, and that enabling them allows you to get more in-game money, I can’t help but fully agree with the Street Fighter V fans here and the outrage, as evidenced on Reddit.

It will be interesting to see how this situation is going to unfold. Some players have been hypothesizing that this is some sort of test Capcom is conducting. The idea is that the developers might be doing a dry-run of some future free-to-play version of Street Fighter. Either way, fans are angry, and it’s easy to see why, even if they’re only seeing ads for in-game stuff, and not from third parties. We’ll have to wait and see if they can gather enough clout to pull a Battlefield 2 and force Capcom to pull the ads completely.