Street Fighter V DLC can be "Earned" Rather than Bought

So, there’s a bit of an epidemic among fighting games, most notably any that Capcom works on: since they rely so heavily on perfect balance, versatility, and an ever growing community of professional fighters, it oftentimes finds itself the subject of updates. Updates, of course, don’t cost nothing: the game has servers to maintain and employees to pay, so what will often be the case is that many of these updates are paid. Most noticeably, in street Fighter 4, there was the Super, the Arcade, the Ultra versions, which added new characters and balance to the game, and usually cost a cool 20-50 bucks.

An expensive update, especially since not buying them basically meant you were outlawed from ever playing online.

Well, it seems Capcom has finally gotten some sympathy for the common gamer, and thus has implemented a very… different… way to unlock Street Fighter V’s inevitable periodic content: rather than having to pay for every update, you can earn in-game currency with every fight and ‘purchase’ new DLC characters and content as they become available. Called “Fight Money," you get some after every match—slowly, but you do—and if you don’t feel like paying for "Zenny," which is the paid currency you can buy to immediately unlock a new character, you can use Fight Money instead.

Now, because of this system, the new game—which launches Spring, 2016—will only start with 16 characters whom will all (presumably) be free. Additional characters to fill out the roster will come out periodically afterwards, which will have to be unlocked one of those two ways. So it’s an approach very similar to a MOBA.

Is this a good or a bad thing? It’s hard to say at this early stage. Free is good, generally, but with 16 characters and no way to know how quickly we get this Fight Money, how much Zenny costs, or how much Fight Money you need to unlock new characters, a lot of people might have just preferred the 30+ roster immediately and paying for new characters. But for others… a one-time payment and simply binging on the game is preferable, I’m sure.

We’ll have to wait for a more proper gauge of its user-friendliness after we get more specifics. But the intention, at least, of making the game always accessible for everyone regardless of their ‘edition’, is noble at least. I just hope it stays that way.