MLG vs The Street Fighter Community
By newmarcom 47 Comments
Not that long ago, MLG brought Tekken 6 into their scene. Now I was a little curious as to why Super Street Fighter 4 wasn't also included. Fortunately, the folks over at djwheat.tv managed to get an interview with MLG co-founder Sundance DiGiovanni and they briefly explain the situation.
Time Code:
Video - Part 2 @12:20 & @58:00 + all of Part 3
MP3 - @52:00 & @97:55
From my impressions of the interview, there seems to be a bit of bad blood back in the early days of the Street Fighter scene. MLG's first attempt to support the scene was met with immature players booing and general intolerance at non-fighting games. Because of that, MLG has been gun shy about sponsoring another tournament. Now that we have grown up a little, MLG and Capcom are slowly working together to give the Street Fighter Community another chance.
However, there still appears to be a few remaining people who are still bitter about MLG's dealings that they are willing to sabotage the goodwill everyone is trying to rebuild. The post interview commentary goes into detail about the subject, but to summarize, an unknown person was trying to build a new EVO-like international tournament. The event was disbanded afterwards but not before conning a bunch of people booking flight and hotel in advanced. The organizer stated he was bribed by an MLG employee and left forum entirely. It was bad enough MLG has to do damage control in the thread, but Capcom Japan also found the thread. Before MLG can explain their side of the story, Capcom Japan read the thread and assumed MLG was destroying independent tournament communities and stopped all plans with MLG entirely. Sundance DiGiovanni did not confirm any of the story nor did he say anything in detail, it is pure speculation by the djwheat crew. But if any of this is true, the voice of the community holds powerful sway in corporate decisions.
If the wall of text is too much, here's my point of view:
- MLG wants Street Fighter to be a part of the circuit
- A bitter past may have left salty people trying to sabotage MLG's attempts with Capcom
- Capcom Japan believes MLG is harming the independent tournament scene
- MLG has a stigma of being an over-controlling organization
So how can we fix this?
- Be aware of the scene. The more we know, the better we can voice our opinion to Capcom and MLG.
Whether or not you believe any of this, I leave up to you. For all I know, I could have been spouting propaganda the whole time. But I want to believe that we, the community, can help push MLG and Capcom and bring Street Fighter on to the main stage.
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