Last year, Capcom made changes to their official Street Fighter V competition, the Capcom Pro Tour, that hurt the qualifying chances of a very specific sector of the fighting game community: those who live outside competitive hubs like the United States and Japan.

The adjusted points system impacted players who lacked the means to travel to major tournaments in foreign countries. The tour’s Latin America region was hit particularly hard thanks to an almost complete lack of premier events, but new details released last week for the 2019 Capcom Pro Tour show that the organisers seem to be moving towards rectifying the circuit’s glaring balancing issues.

Street Fighter V has had its share of disappointments since it arrived in 2016, from a shoddy launch to installing dangerous backdoors for malware in players’ computers.

Capcom’s latest brilliant idea is to plaster the entire game with advertisements, turning the most storied fighting game franchise of all time into a billboard.

Over the past few years, Capcom Pro Tour has evolved from the collection of direct qualifiers organised for the Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Tournament in 2012 to something much more inclusive. In order to ensure global representation at Capcom Cup, leaderboards were established in four distinct regions - North America, Asia, Europe, and Latin America - allowing players from across the world the chance to earn a spot at the main event with strong performances in or around their home countries.