Yoshinori Ono says sorry, as Street Fighter 5's server problems gradually improve

Street Fighter 5’s live launch has… not been smooth. While initial complaints about the game’s lacking single-player content are one thing – Challenge mode is being held back until March, while a properly fleshed-out Story campaign isn’t due until June, both as free updates – online server functionality has been fairly dire for the first 24 hours of the game’s publicly available life. Of course, local vs. play is where any great fighting game really thrives – and in that context, Street Fighter 5 is a great fighting game – but with little to no reliable online functionality, players without nearby fight buddies have been left with not much more than a series of pretty menus.

Capcom, however, is on the case. While it’s surprising that SF5 has performed so badly online since launch – the several public beta tests largely went very well in my experience – the unexpected issues of failed matchmaking and non-functional Battle Lounge lobbies are being tackled.

To emphasise the priority given to the work, series Producer Yoshinori Ono has repeatedly taken to Twitter since yesterday morning, to apologise and reassure fans that fixes are on the way soon.

But Ono isn’t your only source of solace in this time of great combo-deprivation. As he points out, it’s worth keeping an eye on the SFV Server Twitter account for more detailed tech updates. It currently looks like Ranked and Casual fight match-making is back up and running, while Battle Lounges are functional, albeit with some stability issues remaining.

Hopefully all of this will be sorted soon. Early server issues, alas, remain an occupational hazard with big releases these days. It’s just rather a shame that SF5’s limited offline offering has rather emphasised the issue this time around. Still, we’ll all laugh about this in a month’s time. Hopefully. Yeah, we (almost) definitely will.

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