Street Fighter 6 beta springs back to life on PS5, gets K.O.’d

Not Perfect

Some lucky Street Fighter fans got a sneaky treat this week, as the recent Street Fighter 6 Closed Beta miraculously sprang back to life for several hours, before quietly shutting down once again. The beta, which took place on PC and current-gen consoles, officially ended on Monday, October 10.

Earlier this week, however, PS5 players who still had the client installed found that could suddenly re-access a rudimentary version of the trial. Matchmaking wasn’t working with any great stability, but the Training Mode was up and running, giving some sneaky petes several more hours to get the tech down with Messrs Ryu, Ken, Guile, Kimberly, Juri, Jamie, Chunners, and Luke.

Word would eventually spread online, and the CapCops came in to hit the big red button.

Of course, this reopening of the servers was a total accident. Players were noting that the unofficial beta was crashing, load times had been extended, and online matches were disconnecting with regularity. So clearly, somewhere, somebody at Capcom typed a “1” where a “0” was needed and opened the door to the PS5 community. It is incredibly likely that the publisher which launch more betas before Street Fighter 6‘s eventual 2023 release, and there will assuredly be an open beta at some point to stress test the servers, (though it must be said that online was very slick during the official beta run time.)

While I certainly don’t wanna be a cop about things. Word of various accidental betas and cracks is a little frustrating for players. Getting started in a fighting game is tough enough, let alone when some cabals of players have already been putting in hours, weeks, or even months of additional, unofficial practice. The larger concern is that unofficial access will scare publishers away from further beta periods — though, in the long run, these off-record throwdowns are unlikely to affect launch sales.

Still, some of us need all the help we can get, without better players having weeks of additional practice.

Street Fighter 6 launches in 2023 on PlayStation, PC, and Xbox platforms. You can check out our thoughts on the great looking fighter here, as well as my list of 50 highlights from the official beta.

Chris Moyse

Senior Editor – Chris has been playing video games since the 1980s. Former Saturday Night Slam Master. Graduated from Galaxy High with honors. Twitter: @ChrisxMoyse