It’s not been long since Capcom’s latest venture, Street Fighter x Tekken, was released. Fans of the Street Fighter IV series were overjoyed until a few days ago when some datamining revealed a few disturbing facts.
Despite only being out for a few days, new-on-the-block fighting game giant, Street Fighter x Tekken, is already under fire from gamers across the world. Some datamining revealed that there was a large amount of unused data on the disc, which upon further inspection turned out to be 12 fully coded characters who weren’t available in the character roster, or appeared in the game at all. Changing a few data values even made these characters selectable and playable.
Whilst it isn’t unusual practice nowadays to pre-plan DLC and leave a few files on disc before release, so as to lessen the amount necessary to download when the DLC is finished, in this case, nothing needs to be downloaded. With the DLC line-up already planned for fall of this year at a cost of £5 for 2 characters, all you’ll be doing is paying to unlock data that is already available to you. These on-disc characters include Elena, Guy, Cody, Sakura, Dudley, Blanka, Alisa, Christie, Jack, Bryan, Lars, and Lei as well as the Playstation exclusive characters, Cole, Turo and Kuro.
As can be expected from online communities, there was immediate backlash from gamers everywhere. Capcom responded quickly with the following official statement:
“Capcom has confirmed that 12 new fan-favorite characters will be available as Downloadable Content (DLC) on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC versions of Street Fighter X Tekken later this year. The playable characters will make their debut on the PS Vita system when the game is released this fall, with the console and PC versions receiving them as DLC soon after. The character information and files were intentionally included on retail versions of the PS3 and Xbox 360 game to save hard drive space and to ensure for a smooth transition when the DLC is available, allowing players who choose not to purchase the content the ability to play against players that did. More specifics regarding pricing, dates and other additional exciting DLC plans for Street Fighter X Tekken will be shared at a later date. As a reminder, the retail version of the game will be the only disc-based version consumers will need to own and all future upgrades will come from post-launch DLC.”
Whilst DLC produced in this manner does tend to incite controversy, Capcom may have expected this. Their community manager, Brett Elson, can be quoted as saying that these pre-prepared characters may stop Capcom from releases a “Super” version of the game, a la the Street Fighter IV series. “And while pricing details are still to come, I can at least say it’ll be a great value considering the size of the update – 12 new characters is pretty substantial, after all,” he said.
