Ahead of Capcom Cup 11 later this weekend, FGC has drawn attention to the league’s unusual prize pool.
Several professional players across the FGC scene have voiced their outrage online, questioning whether it could be called ‘the worst esports prize distribution of all time.’
The upcoming Capcom Cup 11 in Japan has $1,282,000 (£995,300) in prize money to be shared amongst winners and losers this year.
A post on X by Andrew Nestico, a Melee content creator, showcased a graph illustrating with an uneven distribution between first place and the other placements. The first-place prize was comically skyrocketing upward above the other placements.
Here are all the placements and their respective prizing:
- 1st: $1 million
- 2nd: $100,000
- 3rd: $50,000
- 4th: $20,00
- 5th: $10,000 each
- 7th-8th: $5,000 each
- 9th-12th: $4,000 each
- 13th-16th: $3,000 each
- 17th-24th: $2,000 each
- 25th tied: $1,750 each
- Eliminated: $1,500 each
On the official Street Fighter esports site, Capcom stated: “The champion will be named the World’s Strongest Street Fighter 6 player and awarded $1 million at the place where Street Fighter originated, Ryogoku Kokugikan!”
That leaves $282,000 up for grabs for the rest of the competitors. Second place will only receive 10% of what first place is set to win, which has invited polarising opinions online.
Capcom Cup 11’s Prize Pool Creates Mixed Response
Some have criticised Capcom, stating that it should’ve created a more balanced prize pool, with users already referring to the upcoming tournament as a ‘money glitch.’ Controversial Melee player turned Guilty Gear -STRIVE- champion William ‘Peter ‘Leffen‘ Hjelte called it the ‘worst’ prize pool distribution he’s seen.
FGC members online have already drawn satirical comparisons to the 2011 StarCraft tournament, which awarded players landing fifth to eighth place 25 BitCoins.
On the other hand, others have welcomed the higher stakes it introduces, noting that several tournaments featuring other games have seen similar prize pools.
Zander Bennett, an American Pokemon TCG player, said: “For what it’s worth, this is almost the exact distribution as Survivor […] and nobody has really fussed about the ‘winner takes all’ nature of that.”
It is worth noting that this distribution mirrors that of Capcom Cup X, where the winner also took home $1,000,000.
