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How dare Capcom sully the good name of the Street Fighter series by pushing constant advertising in the player's face! The Capcom I loved from the 1990s would never-

Okay, there was that Treesweet orange juice sign from Marvel Super Heroes. That happened once, but the Capcom of my youth certainly didn't make a habit of-

Blast it, it's that Fujitsu billboard from Street Fighter Alpha 2! Fine, Capcom has always been a bunch of money-grubbing whores, but at least they tried to be subtle about it twenty years ago. Now, we're getting stuff like this...

"I am marketing power made fleash!"
(image from Polygon)

Thanks to a recent update, Street Fighter V has advertising all over the friggin' place. Not subtle, unintrusive product placement that helps make each stage feel a bit more lifelike, but the Capcom Pro Tour logo plastered all over the backgrounds and characters. Yes, you can turn off the ads, but they're turned on by default. Yes, you get "fight money" for every match while the ads are on, but the payout is supremely inconsequential. Twelve FP per match to get beaten over the head with advertising is less "carrot and stick" and more like a stale baby carrot tied to the end of a telephone pole.

Honestly, I didn't like Street Fighter V that much before... it represented a low point for the series, with characters dredged from the bottom of the Capcom barrel (Rainbow Mika? Really...?) and a storyline with all the consequence of an ant's bowel movement. Piling in more commercials than the last fifty two Super Bowls combined does little to sweeten my opinion of the game. Special thanks to Polygon and Destructoid for the warning... I mean, news.