Last week, Capcom released a new Community Licensing Agreement directly aimed at tournaments for Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition that attracted the ire of passionate players and tournament organisers throughout the competitive Street Fighter community. We’ve already covered the situation as a whole on VG247, with Alex’s feature covering Capcom’s attempt to incorporate the grassroots scene into a more controlled, formal esports scene.
While the sentiment among your average competition-minded fighting game player is easily found on Twitter, we wanted to reach out to the tournament organisers whose businesses and livelihoods would be directly affected by the implementation of this new licensing agreement to find out their initial reaction, what parts of this new agreement are of particular note to them, whether this affects their ability to run Street Fighter events, and their hopes going forward.
We first reached out to Brandon “SHIN-A” Hurley, tournament organiser for both weekly and monthly fighting game events in Cork, Ireland. On a week-to-week basis, the meetups bring in 10 regulars, while monthly events pull in around double that – with friends and competitors travelling over from around the country to enjoy the event. It’s your classic, community-focused meetup that you can find at the heart of communities all over the world. While Brandon isn’t too worried about the effect on small- to mid-level events, he has some concerns.
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