Street Fighter V Unofficial Netcode Patch Thoughts

Earlier this week Altimor released an unofficial patch for the PC version of Street Fighter V to improve its netcode. Before speculating too much on what the ultimate outcome will be, let's take a look at the facts. The biggest question is obviously whether the patch actually works. Enough credible people have weighed in, and the answer seems to be yes. At very least, if both players are on PC and both have the patch installed, their connection seems to be noticeably better.

The other important fact is that when a PC player using the patch plays against a PS4 player, the PS4 player experiences one-sided rollback and the game is basically unplayable for them. Where does that leave us?  

What You Should Do (As a PS4 Player or PC Player)

I would expect most PC players to use the patch and turn off crossplay so they only play with other PC players (who hopefully have the patch). Unfortunately, there might be a few jerks who play on PC with the patch and still leave crossplay enabled, which ruins the experience for the PS4 player. PS4 players should disable crossplay on their end as well to avoid this. The net effect will be that PC and PS4 players will mostly cease to interact with each other.  

Impact to Players

Some harm is done to both PC and PS4 communities, since in general, the larger the playerbase, the better. However, PS4 players will have the downside of a smaller playerbase with no real upside. PC players will have a smaller playerbase (in terms of raw number of players online), but you could end up with a functionally similar or even larger playerbase than you had before, due to the improved netcode. I'm picking arbitrary numbers here, but consider these two scenarios:

1. I play on PC but don't implement the fix so I can still do crossplay. The netcode is sketchy, so I can only play people within 500 miles or so.

2. I play on PC, implement the fix, and turn off crossplay. I can now only play with PC players, but I have a playable connection with people up to 3000 miles away.

It's very possible I have more people to play with in scenario two! Additionally, my online experience (in terms of lag, rollback, etc.) could be much better in that scenario. The forces at work also just heavily incentivize PS4 players to turn off crossplay anyway, so PC players may not even be able to pick scenario one regardless. Scenario two could become better once second order effects start to kick in— some players might switch to the PC version over time, since it offers the best possible online experience.  

Capcom's Potential Response

First off, Capcom may very well do nothing. RisingDragonGod has been bringing hacked broken characters online for a while now and Capcom hasn't stopped them. RisingDragonGod's hacks are pretty harmless (apparently the opposing player's win streak and league points aren't affected). If Capcom would leave something like this unaddressed, it's not hard to imagine they wouldn't do anything about the unofficial netcode patch either. I think this is probably the most likely outcome. Possibility two is Capcom finds a way to patch the game so that the unofficial patch no longer works. It's already a bad look for Capcom that a hacker without source code access fixed a major issue with the SFV netcode in just two days. If they do nothing, they look either lazy or incompetent (take your pick). If they take away the fix, they still look lazy/incompetent (what were they doing for those four years?!), and on top of that, they'd come off as vindictive. Lastly, possibility three is Capcom themselves officially implements some version of the fix, allowing PC and PS4 players alike to benefit from it while preserving crossplay. This is obviously the best possible outcome, but I think it's also the least likely (unfortunately).  

Conclusion

For now, PC players should apply the patch. Both PC players and PS4 players should disable crossplay. Altimor is apparently working on a version of the patch that will allow patched PC players to play with unpatched PC players and PS4 players without the issues we're currently seeing. If that comes to pass, everybody can enable crossplay again and move on with their lives. Altimor posts on r/StreetFighter, so keep an eye out there for future developments. It's hard to imagine Capcom coming out of this looking good, but there are clearly some ways to handle it that are better than others. I don't think anybody should begrudge Altimor for making the patch or PC players for using it. The blame firmly falls at the feet of Capcom for ignoring the issues with SFV's online play for such a long time.