In his ongoing war to stop players who intentionally quit Street Fighter V early to avoid loss, Capcom seems willing to unleash a new weapon: public shaming.
Last night a new test branch for the PC version of Street Fighter V briefly went on steam with no password protection. Astute viewers at NeoGAF were able to scour that update for new content, including some balance changes and new music settings. The beta branch also includes this screenshot, which suggests a brand new penalty for players who stop running matches too often.
“Special icons will appear in the fighter profiles of players who often disconnect, as well as players who never do, making it easier for players with the same icon to fight each other,” the post reads. In other words, if you ragequit too much, expect people to actively avoid your prominently labeled profile during the matchmaking process.
This is just Capcom’s latest tactic in a fight against temper tantrums that has been going on for months. After Street Fighter V Capcom, launched in February with absolutely no penalty for stopping during a match, began manually punishing frequent quitters by accumulating their League Points and overall ranking in weekly sweeps starting in March. In August, the company had also implemented a stronger automatic “ragequitting penalty” that banned players from matchmaking for 24 hours after being disconnected three times in a two-hour period. Apparently those efforts alone haven’t done enough to solve the problem, and now Capcom is turning to social pressures to help those who try to abuse the system. Those ragequitters should be thankful they aren’t automatically filtered into a “cheaters pool” like their brethren who tried to cheat at Max Payne 3.