The FGC must transition out of grassroots if it wants to survive

The FGC prides itself on being raw. In fact, one of the community’s main gripes about the Daigo vs MenaRD match a few months ago was that some of the moments felt forced. It’s a far cry from the out-of-nowhere, wonderful moments such as Evo Moment 37 and Hayao’s air parry at Evo Vegas 2024, also known as Evo Moment 38.

It also prides itself on being a grassroots esports scene, with tournaments usually led by passionate players and volunteers.

However, the problems of being a grassroots community are already showing themselves. Players have been complaining about setups, banned people showing up at major tournaments, and various other problems that would’ve been addressed if the community had a governing body. As such, I sincerely believe that it’s time for the FGC to transition out of the grassroots scene and into traditional esports.

Genuinely impressive moments can still happen in tournaments produced by the bigwigs, think of the Esports World Cup or ESL. The latter, for example, is behind the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) event, where the iconic Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev’s falling AWP happened. What changed is the production, how the stream is handled, and the overall just how professional everything looks.

Not just that, but this would also pave the way to standardized tournament setups, something that players such as Victor “Punk” Woodley and Kevin “Dual Kevin” Barrios have previously complained about. Dual Kevin put it in a very good way:

And it’s true. The players are not fighting for peanuts anymore. The prize money in tournaments has ballooned in recent years. Capcom Cup has a $1 million take-home money for the champion and an egregious spread for those who placed second and below. To qualify for the Capcom Cup, players need to win major tournaments around the globe.

The main problem with this is that each tournament uses a different setup, making it difficult for players to adjust to the game. Different setups mean different responsiveness in-game, making it easier for players to miss crucial motion inputs, such as dragon punch or a wake-up super.

My suggestion is to reduce the $1 million first-place prize to $500,000 and use the excess funds to help the grassroots scene level up their production and setups. Capcom, the developer of the largest fighting game, Street Fighter 6, needs to step up and let its esports division take over how Street Fighter 6 tournaments should be played. They need standardized setups, proper production, and an overseer at each major tournament to ensure everything is followed to a T.

Better yet, an FGC Esports Committee is a real possibility. This takes the esports divisions of all the major publishers and developers of fighting games and turns them into a single committee that can oversee major tournaments across the globe. This might seem like a lofty goal, but if you think about it, it’s the best possible outcome.

See, most fighting game tournaments feature a plethora of fighting games. It’s almost never a single game at majors, unlike in Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 tournaments. Because of that, I believe it might be easier if fighting game developers had a committee to make decisions. This doesn’t just stabilize tournament quality for big games, but also levels the playing field for other games not called Street Fighter or Tekken.

Aside from that, I believe the committee also needs to be able to handle cheaters and player bans. Unfortunately, the FGC has had a history of issues regarding sexual harassment and frankly unsavory behavior. I’ve talked about this in my piece “Combo Breaker 2026 was a sad reminder that the FGC can still be uncomfortable for women,” where there are still outliers in the community who need to be banned and monitored to ensure they’re not entering major tournaments anymore.

For example, Joseph “Mang0” Marquez has allegedly entered the Rivals of Aether 2 tournament at Evo Vegas 2026, despite being banned from Super Smash Bros. Melee brackets due to his past behaviors. While there’s an argument that his ban will be lifted in the next month, this month is NOT next month. As such, this is essentially ban evading since he’s allowed to just switch games to still attend tournaments.

Lee “Infiltration” Seon-woo, a six-time Evo champion who was banned due to domestic violence allegations by his wife, has been trying to join the community again. This is actually a good example of how a governing body would work: Capcom banned him from participating in any tournaments the developer is involved in, which is pretty much everything. Until now, he’s been trying to rejoin the community, but Evo has been firm in refusing to admit him.

Now imagine a group tasked with doing this consistently. The bans would’ve been implemented across tournaments, and people who are trying to avoid them would be reprimanded fairly. Not just that, but this also protects people who are uncomfortable with sharing a space with people who have done bad things in the past.

Additionally, the group will also have the bandwidth to thoroughly investigate bans to guarantee they are fair to all parties. It just makes things easier for players who want to have fun without worrying about meeting unsavory people in the bracket.

Fighting games might be one of the first esports scenes before esports was even a thing. The first S-tier Counter-Strike tournament was the 2000 CPL Europe Cologne, while the first premier StarCraft tournament was the 1998 PGL Season 3. The first big Street Fighter tournament? Street Fighter II Turbo Championship ’93, a 7,000-player tournament held at the Ryogoku Kokugikan Arena, the same venue where the Capcom Cup is being held. Not just that, but the tournament’s organizer? Capcom themselves.

This could’ve been the start of a wave that would’ve elevated the scene into traditional esports. Even earlier than StarCraft. But for some reason, the community seems to have taken a step back and said that they’ll handle things on their own. Because of this, I believe that the growth of FGC as an actual esports league has been stunted.

It’s puzzling to think about why the scene is still not as big as it’s supposed to be, because the FGC has every possible element to make it an interesting esport to follow. We have storylines such as Daigo Umehara’s legacy and a Tekken region, Pakistan, that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and dominated everyone. To keep it a little relevant with the FIFA World Cup season, it’s like if Cape Verde just popped up in the tournament and then dominated Argentina in the finals.

Now, that’s a head turner, isn’t it?

With Capcom and Bandai Namco getting involved once again, there is a real chance that we’re heading in the traditional esports direction. Capcom has the Capcom Pro Tour, Bandai Namco also has the Tekken World Tour, and even Arc System Works has the Arc World Tour.

But I believe Capcom is doing things the wrong way. As I mentioned earlier, the Capcom Cup has a million dollars in take-home money for the winner and an egregious prize pool spread for the rest of the participants. I believe that the developers are doing this for the headline of “Player wins $1 million playing video games,” hoping to entice new players to achieve that lofty goal.

However, we don’t need that. A million dollars playing isn’t a rare thing anymore. For example, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok’s salary is estimated to be even more than that. League of Legends players, in particular, have pretty high salaries depending on their teams, and I’d believe Counter-Strike 2 top players would be the same. Keep in mind that’s just their salaries. That doesn’t include their tournament winnings

This is why I firmly believe that the Capcom Cup should have less prize money and instead use the excess to develop the grassroots scene and turn them into tournaments with proper standards.

I know that everything I mentioned here seems a little too optimistic. Not just that, but it might also take a long time. However, I believe that the current state of Evo might be the first step to it.

Right now, Evo is owned by Saudi Arabia’s very own RTS. This is important because Evo is receiving funding from them, which they can use to improve the quality of their tournaments.

This then means that Evo right now is not just Evo Vegas. Evo Japan and Evo France are now a thing, with Evo Singapore and others coming up within the next few years. It will essentially become a circuit in its own right, similar to what BLAST and IEM do with their Counter-Strike tournaments.

I know a lot of people are saying that this takes away the prestige of Evo being the most legendary tournament series in the FGC, considering that it’s where a lot of moments were made. But I believe Evo’s expansion to different parts of the world will actually shine a light on the lesser-known regions of the FGC.

This, in turn, will foster better competition in the country and might even produce world-class players in time.

So, what does this mean for the FGC? One of the complaints I’ve seen about big corporations being involved in the production of tournaments is that it would eventually lead to a “clean” environment where trash talk is frowned upon. They don’t want to be held back by guidelines on what they can and can’t say.

However, we’ve actually been “clean” for quite some time now in terms of broadcasting. When was the last time you heard of a commentator at a large tournament just let go of the F-bomb on stream? It’s just not a thing anymore. We’re even beaten by Counter-Strike 2 casters who occasionally curse during Major tournaments, unlike ours, which seem to have been eradicated.

Regarding trash talk, other esports have trash talk! League of Legends players have trash talk, Counter-Strike also has trash talk, you name it, they probably have a personality whose main thing is talking trash.

Take Faze at the CS2 Austin Major, for example. s1imple is yelling at his opponents not to push, Finn “karrigan” Andersen is making ambulance noises after each round win, and David “frozen” Čerňanský is teaching his opponent how to shoot using the right-click. This is the Major, and they actually made the playoffs!

Another example, same Major: Dan “apEX” Madesclaire gave the audience a huge middle finger. He even recorded himself while flipping off everyone in the venue.