Street Fighter 5 has not been the most well-received entry in the long-running fighting game franchise, to say the least. When Street Fighter 5 first launched, it did so as one of the most content-deficient Street Fighter games ever, and while Capcom rectified that over time with regular updates and re-releases, that still left a sour taste in many players' mouths. The other big controversy surrounding Street Fighter 5 has been its online multiplayer issues, which persist to this day and recently received renewed attention thanks to the comments of pro player Victor "Punk" Woodley.
Punk was able to qualify for the Capcom Cup this year and was interviewed by commentators Vicious and UltraDavid in a livestream after earned his spot in the tournament. Punk was asked how he was going to prepare for playing Street Fighter 5 in the Capcom Cup, and he responded that he was just going to play Guilty Gear instead. Punk's main issue with Street Fighter 5 is the laggy online multiplayer, which "tilts" him and so he's not going to force himself to play it to prepare for the Capcom Cup.
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During the stream, Punk clarified that he loves Street Fighter 5 as a game, but that the online "is just not good." With such a public condemnation of Street Fighter 5's online multiplayer functionality, it will be interesting to see if Capcom takes any steps to rectify the ongoing issues or if it will just focus its efforts on the inevitable Street Fighter 6 instead.
Street Fighter 5's poor online multiplayer connectivity has been an issue for years, and before Capcom made any real attempts to fix it, fans actually had to step up and address the problems themselves. A fan-made Street Fighter 5 patch tried to fix the online multiplayer issues, but then Capcom created its own version of the patch to mixed results.
Street Fighter 5's lackluster implementation of rollback netcode has long been a point of criticism and it seems like it will continue to remain controversial, especially in the competitive scene. Meanwhile, other fighting games have been earning praise for their use of rollback netcode, like Guilty Gear Strive, the game that Punk is seemingly wanting to play instead of Street Fighter 5. Even the upcoming Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has proper rollback netcode, a fact that has been used by the fighting game community to poke fun at major, triple-A titles that lack it for whatever reason.
Street Fighter 5 is out now for Arcade, PC, and PS4.
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