Capcom Bans Street Fighter V DLC Stage From Tournament Scene For Being “Too Distracting”

The latest DLC stage released for Street Fighter V – Skies of Honor – has been banned from use in the beat ’em up’s end-of-year tournaments, Capcom has announced. In a notice released on Twitter yesterday, the publisher labelled the dynamic battlefield as being “too distracting for tournament play,” confirming that participants in Capcom Cup 2016 and the CPT 2017 season won’t have the choice of duking it out atop an airplane.

Due to being too distracting for tournament play, the #SFV Skies of Honor stage will not be used for Capcom Cup 2016 and the CPT2017 Season.

— Capcom Fighters (@CapcomFighters) November 22, 2016

Similar to the Kanzuki Beach stage released earlier this year, the reasons for the restriction largely come down to concerns over obscured character movement and, of course, distractions in the form of highly-animated backgrounds. Considering the competitive fighting game scene has a long history of banning characters that are perceived to be imbalanced, the prohibition of stages for the same reason brings a wry smile to our faces. While Street Fighter V‘s tournament scene appears to be flourishing, it’s no secret that sales of the fighter have struggled to meet Capcom’s initial expectations, with recent reports suggesting that it has sold less than 100,000 copies over the last six months.

Ultimately, Street Fighter V‘s poor sales performance has been blamed on the severe lack of content available on launch day, and despite the fact that several large updates have been made to the core gameplay – including a dedicated story mode and six DLC characters – its fortunes show no signs of turning around. While Capcom has yet to confirm or deny the existence of a second season of characters for a potential 2017 start date, the publisher did release a teaser trailer last week for fan favorite character Akuma.

Again, no release date is mentioned in the video, but Akuma will be playable first at Sony’s annual PlayStation Exeprience event, which kicks off next month.

Tell us, are you still playing Street Fighter V or, like many, have you grown tired of the slim single-player content on offer? Let us know what changes you’d like to see Capcom make to the beat ’em up in the comments below.