The fighting game community continues to see massive setbacks from the coronavirus (COVID-19.) Capcom has now decided that the threat is too great to take a chance on running any events before July.
Capcom announced the first half of the CPT has been canceled.
“Currently, the Novel coronavirus is projected to continue for several more months or longer across the world,” Capcom said in a statement. “In light of this situation and considering the health and well-being of our players, staff and visitors, all tournaments scheduled to be held in the first half of the 2020 Capcom Pro Tour (CPT) season have been removed from the schedule.”
Of course, this will cause massive impacts to events such as Combo Breaker, which was set to take place on Memorial Day weekend. Combo Breaker owner Rick “TheHadou” Thiher did not make a public statement on the matter, despite retweeting the Capcom statement.
Coronavirus has had massive impacts on the esports industry as a whole, with over three dozen events facing cancellations, reschedulings, and moves to online tournaments.
With Street Fighter now facing a delay until July, many tournament players are facing the prospect of a very slow beginning of 2020, barring online tournaments. Many local FGC tournaments have begun to shift to online events, but they have not yet seen an uptick in many pro entrants with the exception of events like Wednesday Night Fights out of SoCal.
As a result of these closures many events in the FGC are having to consider whether or not to run at all, with events relying on states to declare states of emergency so they can cancel without incurring massive fees from their host venues.
