Summary
My life was forever changed bySuper Street Fighter 4. It’d been years since I had played a fighting game before meeting my now-wife late in college. It’s a genre meant to be experienced by other people and my quiet, Appalachian hometown wasn’t exactly rife with arcades or other dedicated players to duke it out with. Fast-forward to 2010 and a girl I began to develop feelings for asked me if I had tried Capcom’s latest fighter for myself.
I wasn’t the only one that saw absolute magic in the 2009 reboot, now considered by many as one of the best fighting games of all time. Once a quiet tournament in a hotel event hall for only the most dedicated, the SF4 era is what helped launch TheEvolution Championship Series(EVO) into mainstream popularity. Fighting games came back to arcades outside of Japan, people I knew who didn’t seem the type now had a favorite character, and every anime convention seemingly had tournaments for you to jump into to test your mettle.
But all things must come to an end, or at least recede. While the fighting game genre is seeing a wide and varied interest nowadays, it’s also impossible to ignore the numbers. The tallies for the number of EVO 2025 entrants are down considerably from 2024, even if this year’s retro game entry, Marvel vs Capcom 2, istechnically setting a new game recordfor most entrants ever at EVO.
Why the drop? There are a number of practical factors, but another and more nebulous reason should be considered.
All things have their time in the sun and perhaps the fighting game genre’s moment in the spotlight is over.
EVO 2025 By The Numbers: Down From 2024
How much did the EVO 2025 final entrant numbers for each game drop from the 2024 iteration? Here’s the breakdown.
These numbers do come with some important stipulations.City of the Wolvesis a brand-new release. New games typically receive a bump at EVO due to pot sizes and the chance for competitors to do better in said game than more established titles. We cannot subjectively compare the numbers for 3rd Strike and MvC2, except on the merit of each being retro entrants.
How can MvC2 have its highest entrant numbers ever despite a supposed downturn? The game stopped being played at EVO in 2013; prior to that, what was considered a high number of entrants was much lower.
Still, these are significant drops year-over-year. Most shocking has to be Tekken 8, whose competitive scene has suffered in the last yeardue to poorly received patches and planned content releases.
A surface-level analysis would say that the drop comes from a number of sources, including the fact that many of these games are just getting old.Fighting gamesdo tend to hang around in the competitive spotlight longer than in previous generations. That said, many of these games are approaching their third year without a new iteration. Maybe the selection this year just wasn’t enough to draw in the number of players EVO requires being a roaring success.
There’s more to this number. Sadly, it has everything to do with politics.
The International FGC Is Staying Home
We cannot look at these numbers and discount the current risk of traveling to the United States as a factor. Since being elected to a second term in 2024, President DonaldTrump has made his administration’s agenda clearon both ‘illegal’ immigrants, and those visiting from other countries: you are welcome to visit, but at your own risk.
Since taking power in January, the current administration has used its power to detain and deport a number of peoplefrom all over the world, now in the millions. This includes the holding and deporting of travelers from the likes of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and more.
In addition, the House and Senate recently passed a soon-to-be-signed bill that will begin enforcing a $250 “visa integrity fee” per visa holder from October onward. Taken even further, Secretary of State Marco Rubiosaid regarding July travel bans, “Visiting America is not an entitlement. It is a privilege extended to those who respect our laws and values.”
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes was blunt,calling it a “war on tourism.”
The fighting game community has a worldwide audience. It’s not hard to see how restrictions and hostility towards coming to the United States would affect a tournament like EVO, a point which is made especially true when you remember that one of the hottest rising demographics in the FGC continues to be South America.
This is corroborated further when we look at the number of entrants for Street Fighter 6 alone at EVO Japan 2025, which tallied 6,653 total players. But again, this feels like a situation where a confluence of events is occurring all at once, creating a maelstrom of loss.
Let’s consider burnout, the industry, and the genre itself.
As Video Games Struggle, So Does Esports
Competitive gaming and esports have struggled in light of the game industry’s development and layoff issues. Many esports tournaments are often supported by and run by the publishers of the games in question – League of Legends and the now-defunctOverwatch Leaguestand as prime examples. That comes with a risk. As development teams are laid off and budgets are slashed, so too are the earmarks on marketing funds usually used for events like this. So much so that some of them just don’t exist anymore.
Furthermore, we’re seeing a moment in time when ‘games as a service’ titles feel like both a major risk and the only way forward.It was less than a year ago that Sony’s hero shooter Concord was released and went away within a matter of weeks. For a fighting game to succeed anymore, it needs to be well-supported and possess a strong, if not fervent, online player base.
And the best days of many fighting games feel far behind us. Maybe I’m getting older – my hands ache with more regularity as I approach 40 – but the fighting game zeitgeist felt far stronger just a decade ago. EVO was even on mainstream network television in its final year of Street Fighter 4 and the first for Street Fighter 5 at the tournament. That feels made up, somehow.
Now? The streets sound quieter than ever. This is the natural changing of the seasons. Genres come, go, ebb, and tide. The fighting game genre somewhat fell in on itself in 1999, as Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike came out and failed to find a home audience, despite being popular in Japanese arcades. It wouldn’t be until the series revival with SF4 that Capcom found itself back on top.
This is all to say that a number of factors seem to be squeezing the FGC; not one single thing can be to blame. To do so would ignore monetary, political, and social factors. But there’s also nothing wrong with fighting games becoming specialized and more niche. It’s always been their trademark. The scrappy don’t-call-it-an-esport that could, beating the odds and continuing on, regardless.
It’s why I love fighting games, and why I constantly root for their success.
EVO will rise again, but maybe it’s time for a rest in the corner while the hype man gets fighting games ready for another round.
