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Street Fighter 6 player accused of alleged cheating at Capcom Pro Tour tournament











Wherever there is competition – no matter what the field – there will be someone trying to circumvent the rules or simply break them.





This certainly applies to fighting games as well: a Street Fighter 6 player was accused of cheating during a Capcom Pro Tour tournament.









During this weekend's World Warrior Asia East event at AubyCup, some players, including Capcom Cup X runner-up FNC|Chris Wong, pointed out a suspicious participant.


This would obviously be a master-ranked Guile, called ばけもの / Bakemono, which aptly means “monster,” and who appears to administer punishments and inputs in a way that isn't entirely possible or sensible for a human alone.


For example, the clip provided by Wong shows Guile punishing Cammy's crouched medium attacks multiple times with great precision, which doesn't seem too suspicious at first glance until you look a little closer.




Frame Assist Tool developer HatsonFGC pointed out that Guile would consistently throw heavy punches on Cammy's crouched mid-hit in the 8th frame, pointing out the player using scripts that violate the rules.


Scripts can be set up to automatically perform certain actions and inputs for a player in response to the actions of the opponent or the user themselves. For example, they can perform a tech attack on every throw or a shoryuken attack on every jump attempt.


And scripts obviously violate tournament rules, especially the official Capcom Pro Tour tournaments.







The player still has some control over his character, unlike a fully automated, tool-based bot, but scripts give him an unfair advantage over the opponent.



We decided to dig a little deeper and took a close look at Bakemono's other tournament matches to look for further evidence that these alleged scripts may be involved in the results – and to compare them to what we've seen from other alleged cheaters in SF6.


In the nearly a dozen different games we've watched, this Guile has pulled off a “perfect” sonic boom every time, except for one time, which we'll get to in a moment.


There is only a three-frame window to achieve the Perfect Boom and give the projectile an additional frame advantage and more damage.


It's not too unusual for a master level Guile to get 90% or maybe a little more of that perfectly, but 100% raises questions.



Additionally, we also saw Bakemono execute virtually every throw that came their way and that they performed very similar moves, such as only using one of two different setups for drive-rush combos along with max range punishes.


This Guile hasn't played perfectly the entire time, but there are more than enough there to question what's going on here.


Another thing we noticed about Bakemono's gameplay was that their anti-airs were usually on point, whether through flash kick, heavy crouching punches, or medium kicks, but there were certain awkward angles where Guile would seemingly get stuck on a jump attack despite having an attack ready (that probably would have worked).


For these types of situations, a script may be missing data or there may be conflicts in the program that may cause it to not respond at all.


Perhaps the most suspicious of all we witnessed, aside from Cammy's punishments, was his first loss to Zangief of #KK#.


In this set, Bakemono looked like a completely different player. His decision making in neutral mode was poor, he couldn't react to jumps from the grapple at all, and he also couldn't execute any technical holds (although he was able to land some).




And in the four rounds, he only performed one normal sonic boom, and that was the only one we saw where the input timing wasn't perfect.


None of this is conclusive evidence that Bakemono cheated and used scripts in the tournament, but there is reason to believe that he may have enabled scripts after being sent to the losers bracket to try to stay in the tournament.


Bakemono was able to defeat five opponents in a row on the losing side, including Jimini, SIFU, 1204k, gettajoe and smcat, before finally being eliminated by FrankSoas Akuma.


Further cause for concern can be found on Bakemono's Start.gg page, where it is revealed that this is the only tournament he has ever participated in under this name, despite the account only being created this month.


Additionally, the player has now changed their in-game name, main character, and profile to potentially disguise their actions/identity – however, they can still be found under the same user ID.


At the time of reporting, Capcom has not yet made any official comments regarding Bakemono or the tournament in question.


However, they released a statement back in August calling for the investigation and restriction of players who cheat, engage in inappropriate chat, or otherwise engage in disruptive behavior.


Whether or not this was genuine cheating, the concern is that SF6 may need to be updated to better block these scripts, or at least make it even easier to flag and report suspected cheaters (and get quickly investigated in officially licensed tournaments).


It's not always easy to spot, but fighting game players are very smart and can spot inconsistencies – or when things are done too consistently.


So if you try to cheat in a major fighting game, don't expect to get away with it for long.



Luckily, Bakemono didn't make it into the top ranks of the tournament, but his alleged actions still resulted in six other players being eliminated or defeated, which likely wouldn't have happened if the matches were played on a truly even playing field, which is really annoying for something that requires so much time and dedication.


It will be important to see how Capcom responds to this incident and if any further information or examples are uncovered.








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