Before the release of Street Fighter V, Capcom divided its fans by announcing that microtransactions would appear in the series despite being a fully-priced game. Now, optional in-game advertisements have made their way to the title and fans are not pleased.

Capcom’s new “Sponsored Content” has enveloped the game in three different ways. The first is “Ad Style” costumes, which emblazons fighters with ads for microtransactions, tournaments or the Capcom Pro Tour, particularly prominent on boxing gloves. This can be seen on the loading screen and while it won’t affect loading times, it will plaster the screen with the debatably unwelcome content. And lastly, ads decorate stages from the billboards in the background to the floor.

The purpose is to remind players about extra content available within the game, as well as showcase what it going on in the larger competitive community. In turn, players earn additional Fight Money (FM) for having the ads turned on. Sadly, this equates to 12FM per fight while content purchased with the currency costs upward of 20,000FM.

Fortunately, Capcom had the foresight to make the Sponsored Content entirely optional. Players unwilling to subject themselves to the intrusive content can head into the Battle Settings, giving separate options to turn off Ad Style and Loading & Stage advertisements.

Both fans and professionals have chastised the move as greedy, prompting the question of whether Sponsored Content has a future within the game. Capcom has yet to officially comment on the matter.

KitGuru Says: While I think that there are clever ways to remind people of tournaments and content within the game, garish advertisements have no place infecting the gameplay in my opinion. It’s all well and good being able to turn them off – which I will praise Capcom for, but did it ever really have a place in the game to begin with?

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