Street Fighter Cross Gamers

(Or: How following the wacky rules led me to CRIME. Or: Capcom? whut happen?)

I love fighting games. They're my favourite genre. I'll give them all a go, even if I'm really not taken in by the style or presentation of a new game, I'll always log it, because who knows what untold joys you could discover, and for every Rise of the Robots, there's a Skullgirls.
As a huge, life-long fan of the Street Fighter and Tekken series, I was surprised and intrigued by the announcement of Capcom's Street Fighter X Tekken, which planned to take beloved characters from two very, very different games and present them in the same scrap, on an even battlefield, in a bout of fisticuffs surely for the ages.
My interest went through the roof when some of the roster was revealed, I knew some of my Tekken faves were on board, like Lili and Asuka, along with Juri and Ibuki on the Capcom side.

For moar dollar, you too can have your favourite characters look like other characters. If you like.

The reveal of Poison, my favourite Capcom character of all time, took this to eleven. They stuck Cammy and Nina in for my good buddy, and with that, a really exciting game was on the horizon. I would not get my dream Zafina vs Rose fortune-teller wars, but I was good to go.

It had Poison. POISON.

Oh yes please.

Oh, but how it all went so very wrong, like, mind-screwingly bad in so many departments. SF x Tekken would turn out to be the first shot in 2012 that would secure Capcom a standing in the list of "Most-spectacular-tumble-from-the-top-in-a-single-year-by-any-company-not-called-WCW.
It was such a mess of a product that it's almost satire, and for those who didn't experience it, a quick opinion hunt online will tell you all you need to know.

I didn't make this.

The game was released, and I wasn't really feeling it, it wasn't bad per se, it was bright and colourful, had cool character models and somehow managed to make the full contact, hand-to-hand based Tekken fighters stand toe-to-toe with the cowardly, fireball-tossing Street Fighters. I've played much worse fighting games.
But it all felt like such an anti-climax, it was all so low-key, vanilla and bland.
I didn't like the lack of stages, some badly overpowered characters, nasty infinite combos, strict time limits and a dull, go nowhere storyline.
But way beyond that were the horrendous sound issues on Xbox, the terrible Pandora mechanic, the tacky costumes and, above all, the offensive, game-breaking Gem mechanic, where you could essentially pay to have ridiculously overpowered teams. With so many variants available it single handedly ensured you left your audience exasperated, bored and rolling back to their tried and tested fighting games where your opponents skill level didn't vary based on the amount of money the player had spent bulletproofing their characters.

On top of all this, the gaming community turned viciously on Capcoms ridiculous decision to lock an abundance of characters away on the disc, along with costumes and even edit colours, as if Ono has a copyright on Blue (the colour, not the circa 2003 boyband.)
The fans spoke with their wallets, or more accurately, on whiny forums, and Capcom eventually apologised for the abortion of a marketing disaster that was On-Disc-DLC. They made comment about the DLC having a different "Value" to the rest of the data which is why it was locked away. This would be hilariously right for the wrong reasons, as we'd find out when the PS Vita version was released.

Now that's the negative overview, and its a much-told and ancient story that you likely already know. But here's a more amusing, personal aside, and an incredible sign of how badly modern day publisher practices play out in teh reel wurld.

As I've mentioned, I love the characters in this game, and I like the games concept and can enjoy the fights themselves sans Gems/Pandora, but after trying the Xbox version and seeing the bugs, along with hearing how many characters were locked away on the £40 disc I did not own (apparently)
I decided to try and get the full experience, fairly, but as cheaply as possible, as any individual might.

Push on a year and the PC version of the game finally gets the extra character DLC, months and months after the console owners. As an apology for the delay, Capcom offers this PC DLC at a reduced price, but for two weeks only.
I can roll with that. I'm thinking, if I can get the game and all the DLC for about £15-18, then its worth the price.
So, I'll buy the PC version of SF x Tekken at a good price, add the cheap DLC and I'll have a fun, good value fighting game with a great roster that I can dip into a couple of times a year.

But the best laid plans of mice and men never encountered modern videogaming.
 
Firstly, I go to Steam, I cannot afford the base game at the time, but I reckon I'll pick up the DLC now whilst the offer is on and then get the base game in a couple of weeks when I can afford it.
Steam however, won't sell me the DLC because I don't have the base game.
Ok, so I buy a brand new copy cheap off teh intarwebz. When it arrives I sync it to Steam.
Except I don't, because the Games For Windows version isn't compatible with Steam.

Guess I've got to buy the DLC from within the game itself then? Fair enough.
Except, when attempting that, I find that going that route does not include the discount.

By now, I've spent way longer than I cared on the whole debacle, so, I go to a great Street Fighter modders site, download a couple of patches, break the game, and get all the characters and costumes free of charge.
Because in the face of all the hurdles, and despite trying to do things "the right way" they have made it so consistently difficult to actually go through the proper channels that I give up and just go down Hackers Boulevard.

Me and the guys, I'm the one with the bowlcut.

I was presented with so many fucking hoops to leap through, after they already had my money, that I was exasperated with playing within their wacky circus and eventually resorted to the generic "warez" culture that so many people live by daily when it comes to all their videogame consumerism.

So, to summarise:

-I bought the game brand new on 360, but it had bugs and missing features, plus Capcom wanted nearly 50% of money I'd already handed over for the game AGAIN to give me characters that were on the disc I'd already purchased.

-Nearly a year later, Capcom released those characters for the PC version at a cheaper price, provided you bought the DLC within their time limit.

-I tried to buy the DLC from Steam, but I wasn't allowed because I didn't own the base game yet.

-I bought the base game from Amazon (My second new purchase of the product)

-I then find I can't sync it with Steam. This deprives me, and anyone else who purchased a hard copy of the game, the DLC discount.

-I try to buy the DLC from within the game itself, but it's full price.

-I cheat and hack the DLC.

I'm not a hack/warez guy. All my games are legitimate copies, I've spent an abundance of money on games, accessories and occasionally DLC, so, regardless of how you view my decision, theres no arguing with the fact that I tried several times to do things by their ridiculously convoluted bullshit ways, but they just kept throwing up more barriers.

The mad irony is, I don't really care about SF x Tekken as a game. I just like its roster and can't turn down the opportunity to have my favourite Chick with Dick at my beck and call. Gawd knows I waited long enough for her playable debut (Not counting that unbearable Final Fight game for the Sega Saturn)

Oh no thanks

So, if I didn't even care that much about owning this game, and even I was turned off by all the barriers and BS, then how the hell are publishers expecting casual fans, newcomers or just "Oh, I'll give this a go" impulse buyers to make the same effort?

This is just one story, and its a totally unimportant one in the bigger picture of life, but I like it as a sign of how all the barriers put in place to prevent hacking and to make more money directly caused the opposite of said activity to take place.
As such you may see it from a different viewpoint than mine. Maybe you feel I've committed a crime, or maybe you feel that I should have just gone without, and yes, you would have weight to an argument as such.

Me, gleefully enjoying my HUGE saving of £4, despite paying twice for a game I feel so-so about..

But this isn't a tale about the grey areas of piracy, DLC, hacking or any of the above.
It's simply me suggesting to Capcom, if you had put all those costumes and characters right there, ready to play, for all to enjoy, on all formats, on day freaking one, you might not have looked liked total bastards in the eyes of the gaming community and maybe SF x Tekken would still be a semi-interesting game played in the Fighting Game Community today, instead of it being this dead-in-the-water, nothing niche title that is only referred to in mocking tones and pointed at as an example of everything thats wrong in modern day game marketing.

In the past I bought Capcom's Street Fighter IV, then I upgraded to Super a year later and then I purchased the Arcade Edition upgrade. This isn't about my financial commitment to Capcom, a company I've supported with my voice and my wallet on a variety of formats for over fifteen years.

People were sold a game at full price, had a huge, huge chunk of content locked away from them, got different characters in different versions, received DLC months apart from each other at differing prices, were given the option to pay money to make winning easier and, in the case of the Xbox version, had to suffer horrible bugs and even features listed in the manual that weren't actually available in the game.

These characters have no monetary worth in handheld form apparently

The ultimate hypocrisy faceslap was when all the characters came unlocked on the PS Vita release of the game day one, essentially calling shenanigans on the previous claim that the DLC has a seperate value, as clearly Capcom weren't losing out by having one format fully unlocked.

So the DLC is worth X on consoles, but a differing X on PC and is worth a big fat zero for Vita??

Want to have an issue with my morals??

This one, I see what they did.

This one, not so much.

Capcom have been playing sneaky games with the fans for a few years now, but 2012 was the year when the fans called them on it. The Marvel vs Capcom "Ultimate" upgrade, On-Disc-DLC and Pay-To-Win tropes all contributed to Capcom losing their "A" ranking on the Better Business Bureau website.
How can this be the same company that a few short years ago gave us Street Fighter IV with at least eight free, unlockable characters?
Last year we saw Capcom butcher a franchise, rightfully considered by many to be the company's crown jewel, with the abhorrent Resident Evil 6 and Raccoon City games.
The once mighty developer/publisher that was a flag-bearer for quality and excellence for so long has fallen hard from grace, and has been shit-listed along with internet favourite targets EA, Activision and Ubisoft.


The worst part is, I like Capcom and I love so many of their games, worlds, and characters, my youth was spent with Mega Man, Muscle Bomber and the Street Fighter series.
Final Fight is one of my very favourite games of all time. Same goes for Resident Evil II. And Rival Schools.
If you're reading this and thinking I'm just another Capcom hater then you're very, very wrong, I've always liked Capcom and I think they've produced some amazing games with incredible longevity to their franchises and great service to their fans.
And that's the problem.

How in the blue hell did we end up here?

I really hope that Capcom can step it up for the next generation and reclaim the throne, hit some real humdingers out of the park and restore the fans faith in both their games and their reputation as a solid, trustworthy company.

To be fair, given recent announcements, they might be off to a good start.....

I guess they can relate to this guy.