Capcom and Taitung Already announced The servers for Street Fighter 5: Type Arcade will be shut down on April 1st. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, right? No more balance patches, over-the-air updates, or online play… this works. SF5 is finally finished.But no – it’s worse than that: all arcade versions of Street Fighter 5 will stop workingeven offline on that date.
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It’s fascinating to see this happen in arcades, as arcade games feel far removed from the nightmarish always-on debate. But here we are. Even the arcade version of Street Fighter 5 had massive online connections, and once those connections were shut down, the game essentially ceased to exist. There will be no final Type Arcade patch making the game permanently playable. Instead, SF5 fans are invited to play the console version.
But where does this leave us? I’d call it the thin end of the wedge, but it feels like it actually happened not that long ago. What happens when Capcom decides to no longer maintain SF5’s console and PC servers? Within 15 years, there will be any Is the SF5 version playable? The answer should be yes, but right now it feels like there are no guarantees. This is the slipperiest slope.
As a certified arcade defender, I am also heartbroken by this news. As a Street Fighter and fighting game fan. There’s something special about these games in the arcade. In that environment, they are different and unique. Games that have become outdated and may even have lost some of their relevance in their home markets still thrive in these environments.
Now, today, you can walk into any Japanese (admittedly shrinking) arcade, or even some arcades in the West, and play Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 3, and Street Fighter 4. If you’re lucky, you might even stumble across one of the following: Alpha games, or even a super-rare version of the first Street Fighter, complete with those monstrous pressure-sensitive punch and kick buttons. Starting in April, you will no longer be able to do this in Street Fighter 5.
It used to be that as an arcade operator you could buy a machine – or more likely a game board – and as long as they kept it optimally maintained, it would serve them for many years. To this day, classics like old fighting games or light gun games are still found in many arcades, still proudly in use twenty or even thirty years later.
When their lives in the public eye eventually come to an end, many of these machines will find their way into the hands of private collectors – lovingly maintained and given new life, the “retro arcade” scene is filled with nerdy classic cars that are treated like antiques like these. I own a few machines myself – so I can relate. Even at home, these SF5 “Taito Type X” gamepad setups are deactivated.
That’s all over now for Street Fighter V: Arcade. It’s been a while since a home version of the game was released, and its lifespan ended up being just a few days out of five years. I’m now wondering if Tekken 8, which was also “late” to the arcade version, will suffer the same fate a few years later. Who knows what the future holds for Street Fighter 6.
Obviously, it’s not entirely a waste. Arcade machines are vaguely modular. The orange “Vewlix” cabinet designed specifically for the SF5 can be repurposed for new games. I imagine many will be converted to SF6.
More of these may find their way into private collections. In this market, people with hacked Taito Type X machines will inevitably find a way to play SF5 Type Arcade offline – but the point is, people don’t need to keep playing the game five years after its release. In arcades, home releases or anywhere else.
Furthermore, arcades with an official relationship with Taito or Capcom won’t run hacked games – so SF5 will disappear from official arcades – after a mere five years of life, these places are still happily selling SF2, 3 as oddly nostalgic machines and 4 are featured.
Anyway, this is a reminder. It reminds us that these digital libraries we are creating are ultimately ephemeral and can indeed disappear in the blink of an eye. It’s too bad; I really don’t know how we can achieve a future where this doesn’t happen again.