This past weekend, a mythical Street Fighter participant placed first in what was possibly the most stacked Street Fighter V match ever, but he’ll most effectively be taking home a fraction of his prize cash. Yusuke Momochi is one of the finest combat sports players of all time, with essential victories in various tournaments spanning back to 2007. While he has dabbled in other video games, Street Fighter is still his important place of information. His legacy has persisted into the release of Street Fighter V.
Last weekend, Momochi traveled to the Tokyo Game Show for the Capcom Pro Tour’s Asia Premier. Throughout the competition, he controlled to part out over 1,000 of his fellow competitors to the ultimate region first, incomes him a huge quantity of ranking factors towards Capcom Cup qualification. His economic compensation, however, has hit a bit of a snag. That’s because of Japan’s closely restrictive legal guidelines on competitive gaming and personal privacy standards.
Owing to its importance on the Capcom Pro Tour, the Asia Premier occasion featured a big prize pool, with the champion set to take home five million yen (or around USD 46,000, according to present-day conversion rates). But the delivery of that prize cash could rely on their reputation as a licensed participant. Due to Japan’s harsh restrictions on aggressive gaming, which the United States of America legally considers a form of gambling, the Japanese eSports Union (Jesu) was formed to assist competitors in making a strong profession out of esports.
Jesu partnered with numerous sports developers and started issuing unique seasoned gamer licenses to gamers in 2018. These licenses would allow their recipients to earn cash throughout reputable competitions hosted by Capcom, Bandai Namco, etc. Without a license, players couldn’t take as much prize cash. It might instead be capped at one hundred 000 yen, or around USD 900.
Momochi has been essential to this licensing machine in the past, expressing skepticism that Jesus needs to be the arbiter of who does and doesn’t get to be a seasoned player. While it has yet to be shown, many consider he was the only holdout, whilst Jesus and Capcom offered licenses to 22 top Street Fighter V players last year. Since then, the two corporations have continued to award licenses to competitors who manipulate to win cash at developer-sponsored events to make certain they get hold of a whole lot of their promised prize. Momochi has reportedly been tasked with pasting on his guns, even though these ideas have made his ability to benefit financially from Street Fighter opposition into a difficult mess each time he gets far sufficient to earn some scratch. Naturally, this problem reared its ugly head on the final weekend after Momochi controlled to win the Asia Premier event.
Momochi touched on this topic at some point in his first Twitch stream after the match. According to a summary of the stream by using Andrew “jiyuna” Fidelis, a long-time preventing sports player who allows bridging the language barrier between Japanese and English-speak me groups, Momochi said on the move that he will most effectively be receiving 60,200 yen (or around USD 558) of the five million yen ($ forty-six,000) championship prize. Kotaku contacted Capcom and Momochi about this case. However, they had yet to pay attention to return at the time of publishing.
It’s uncertain which things will happen from here. The latest ruling shared by using Jesu that became translated through a separate birthday party seems to suggest that licenses can also now not be required to get hold of money from esports tournaments for video games that are free to play or don’t allow gamers to come to be more potent with cash (i.E. pay-to-win mechanics). Still, it’s unclear how this can affect future competitions or whilst it’ll come into effect. Momochi, for his element, appears content to stay at the Jesu device entirely, meaning missing out on a large money in that manner. Until Japanese policies exchange, preferring competitive gaming or Jesus itself addresses Momochi’s worries, an alternative course forward isn’t easily available.
