An illegal battle: Street Fighter 6 beta servers are back up well after they were taken offline

Fighting game players around the world got their first true taste of Street Fighter 6 at the start of October while Capcom was running a very limited Closed Beta Test that included most of the online modes and features that will be available when the game launches in 2023. 

That beta was only open to a select portion of the community who registered for and received an access code on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, or PC—and it was only available from Oct. 7 to 10. But there have been a few instances of players sneaking back into the streets for some illegal fights that Capcom may have accidentally enabled. 

Later on Oct. 25, players on PS5 who didn’t delete the SF6 beta client were somehow able to reconnect to the beta servers. Everything was running super slow and with clear bugs in some of the visuals or features, but players were able to access the game and play matches to an extent despite the issues. 

Training Mode was also fully accessible during this time with all of the built-in options, giving players more time to experiment with the new game and its systems. 

It is unclear why this specific version of the beta went back online after being offline for more than two weeks, but the acting theory right now is that Capcom was running an internal test session on those servers and accidentally put the public ones live with limited functionality at the same time. 

The PS5 beta going back online might have surprised the community, but for those in the know, this was only the tip of the iceberg. 

As soon as the original timeframe for the SF6 beta expired, PC players with the ability to access internal files started sharing information and working to crack the game. This has led to one specific build of the client being accessible via external means. 

That cracked build has slowly been improved, but since it isn’t using the full capabilities of the beta, there are numerous bugs and performance issues. Not to mention Capcom has been working to take those builds down, even going as far as to manually delete the game from players’ computers using an update if they log into Steam. 

Speculation is now on the rise that this test and Capcom’s push to remove modded access to the beta are leading up to something new. Reports of a new build for the game being available for in-person play at certain events in November have started popping up, and that has fueled the community’s hope for an eventual open beta closer to the end of the year or early 2023. 

We still don’t have a true release window for SF6 outside of the general 2023 tag, so a second beta to further help improve and test online modes is very likely to happen in the months leading up to its actual launch.