Gigantic news for the fighting game community as both NetherRealm Studios Mortal Kombat 11 and Capcom’s Street Fighter V exhibition appear to be getting pulled from EVO in addition to any possibility we will see an exhibition for Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Both game studios tweeted out that they would be canceling their participation in the fighting game tournament giant after allegations were leveled at EVO organizer, Joey Cuellar.
We stand in solidarity with those who have spoken out against abuse. We will be pulling MK11 from EVO Online.
— NetherRealm (@NetherRealm) July 2, 2020
— Capcom Fighters (@CapcomFighters) July 2, 2020
This is a big blow for EVO as two of the biggest fighting games, including one of the main online games, is now off the table. This is in addition to the player SonicFox stepping down from EVO as well in all games, doing it in solidarity with the victims that came forward with accusations. The fighting game community has been taking many blows lately with many people coming forward with accusations leveled at some of the most high profile players although we will retract from mentioning anyone specifically in this article.
The biggest take away from this is that game companies don’t want to be seen working with community members that have such grave accusations leveled at them, and EVO is suffering a second big setback after being forced to relocate online due to the COVID 19 pandemic shutting down tournaments and events all over the world, and this certainly doesn’t help. It’s hard to tell if the allegations will bring EVO down, but it’s easy to see other companies distancing themself in the future due to the grave nature of them.
Update: It has also been announced that Mane 6 is pulling Them’s Fightin Herds and Bandai Namco is pulling Tekken 7, Soulcalibur 7, and Dragon Ball FighterZ.