Capcom shuts down Street Fighter V servers for maintenance, could fix netcode

Street Fighter V: Champion Edition has only been out for a few days and players are already getting more good news.

After a slight delay, server maintenance is happening from 6:30pm to 10pm CT today and it could bring with it fixes for the game’s netcode.

This has long been an issue with several fighting games on the market, but SFV is one of the worst cases of poor netcode, which has made the game borderline unplayable online at times.

Netcode is a general term used to describe the connection between the player and the game’s server, which can heavily affect a player’s experience. If the netcode performs well, players will be happy. But in the case of SFV, the netcode fluctuates massively from player to player, leading to lag and high latency during matches. 

Capcom is not alone in struggling to have good netcode, as Arc System Works titles like Dragon Ball FighterZ and even Bandai Namco’s Tekken 7 are frequently bashed for how bad the games perform online. But with the release of SFV: Champion Edition, Capcom has a chance to fix something that made many players drop the game. 

Series producer Yoshinori Ono announced earlier in the week there would be some updates to the Champion Edition netcode, but the exact contents of this fix are unknown. 

Outside of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite’s solid netcode, Capcom has a hit-or-miss tendency with patching the online services for its games, which means that this update is likely going to go over really well or make things worse than they already are.

A previous patch to try and promote play between console and PC players had the latter effect, hurting the experience for a lot of players after going live. 

Since the Champion Edition release likely signifies the end of Capcom’s focus solely being on the game as the company focuses on its next entry in the fighting game genre, Seth is probably going to be the last new character we see added to the game.

This means that outside of the Tournament Mode, this netcode patch might be the last big batch of support for SFV outside of stabilization for the game in general. 

Update Feb. 19 12:00pm CT: While the netcode fix isn’t anything game changing, it does look like it helps the online servers deal with spikes of lag, which the game previously couldn’t handle. This means the reports of the fixes only being one-sided rollback are false, but this is a good first step into fixing the netcode if Capcom is willing to continue working on it, which all signs point to the devs are looking to keep updating it.

Obviously, this isn’t some miracle fix that will save you from playing against people with bad connections and having major issues, but overall it seems like the experience is going to be more stable for a larger number of players.