Until recently, Street Fighter V was the latest entry in one of gaming’s biggest franchises and undeniably one of the fighting game community’s most divisive titles. For months, I read opinions online of its pros and cons and with the release of Street Fighter: Arcade Edition, the era of “vanilla” SFV came to an end. Now that Capcom and the community are moving on to the next stage, I wanted to take a look back at all the ups and down of this game’s development and release.

SFV was announced on December 6th, 2014 at the Playstation Experience conference for both PS4 and PC, with its reveal trailer showing a heavy focus on the FGC and fighting game eSports. The game wouldn’t be mentioned again until June 2015, where its first beta was announced followed by a second beta in August 2015. Both available to PlayStation 4 owners exclusively.

The game would release on February 16th, 2016 to tepid reception from the gaming press, averaging a 77 on Metacritic and a 75 on Opencritic. A far cry from Street Fighter IV’s 94 Metascore in 2009 and Street Fighter X Tekken’s 84 in 2012. The main criticism being the lack of single player content on release. Looking back, with the tone of its announcement, SFV was a game made for the FGC first and foremost with eSports at the core of its development. Capcom wanted to have the game ready by the beginning of Capcom Pro Tour 2016 at all costs, so hardcore fans were initially dismissive to the mainstream criticism. After all, this was a game tailor-made for them.

However, veteran players shortly noticed things were a bit off on PS4. 4 months after release there was already some harsh criticism from pro players towards the game’s netcode and input lag. At the time however, it wasn’t common knowledge that the inherent input lag was due to a bug on Unreal Engine 4. This wouldn’t be addressed by Epic Games until October 2017, so for a long time the blame fell on Capcom. To add fuel to the fire, a LinkedIn profile gave rise to the rumor that SFV’s online was developed by a single employee until release to then be contracted to a Korean mobile developer, Nettention. Around that time, Capcom representatives publicly addressed some of these issues and promised to improve communication in the future.

In September 2016, an update to the PC version of the game installed a file called capcom.sys to all player’s machines. This file, intended as an anti-crack measure, effectively could serve as a hidden, unsecured “rootkit” in Windows allowing anyone with malicious intentions to access the machine’s kernel. Uninstalling the game did not remove this file, so Capcom quickly rolled back the update after hearing the user’s concerns. This controversy caused ire among PC players, piling on the discontent of a fanbase growing tired. Around this time, the input delay was reduced from 8 frames to 6.5 frames on PS4.

Announced on release, season 1 characters consisted purely of returning faces. In December 2016, Season 2 announced Akuma as the only returning character with 5 newcomers to the series. Aside from the season’s pass, DLC content for the game up to that point had been purely cosmetic. But in some occasions, stages (and later costumes) were starting to get banned from tournaments, more or less inducing players to save their Fight Money for new characters only. With not many returning “mains” in the horizon, season 2 left some veteran Street Fighter players unsatisfied.

During early 2017, Capcom held two betas for an improved “Capcom Fighters Network”. They took place in March and May with the intention to address the many criticisms to the game’s online infrastructure. In March of that year, we also found out that SFV had sold 1.5 million copies (the latest update shows it at 1.9 million sold) which was under Capcom’s initial target of 2 million copies sold by the end of 2016’s fiscal year.

At EVO 2017, the trailer for season 2 character “Abigail” was unveiled. Compared to surprise announcements by Bandai Namco, Arc System Works, and Arika; a single character reveal did not fare well in comparison. Around that time, more trailers for Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite were being released to the public which did not leave good impressions with the public. Confidence in Capcom was low, partly to due SFV many mishaps up to that point.

On October 5th, 2017 Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition was announced. It would consist of both a new physical SKU (that included all characters released up to that point) and a free update for existing owners. New single player modes would include the much requested arcade mode among other new features. After Capcom Cup 2017, all season 3 characters were unveiled and scheduled to start releasing with SFV: AE. A combination of new characters (with fan favorites like Sagat and Cody returning) coupled with the announcement of a Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection left a good impression with a sign that things would improve for SFV.

SFV:AE released a month ago to very good critical reception. However, after two years of ups and down, for many fans perhaps that boat has sailed. Competition in the genre is getting fiercer by the day with notable releases from Bandai Namco, Netherrealm Games, and Arc System Works. In an upcoming article, I will take a look at how successful Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition was in attracting new players as well as actually addressing the game’s core issues. Thanks for reading!