The inevitable has happened. With all the many different versions of all our favorite fighting games, the wrong version was eventually played at a tournament for money.
At Nord Cal regionals, an outdated version of Ultra Street Fighter IV was being played in the top 16. Four matches went by before Ricky Ortiz and Darryl “Snake Eyes” Lewis noticed something weird and off about their matches. It turned out that an incorrect and out of date version of the game, specifically version 1.00, the raw release version of the game, was being used. As a result, four matches had to be replayed, and as a result some losers won and some winners lost, and everyone in the fighting game community got very very angry.
John Choi, organizer for the tournament, offered an official response to the situation. You can read it below.
On stage throughout the weekend, we used one system that had USFIV version 1.04. During a match of Smash finals on Sunday, the player that owned the system needed to leave and took the system home. Typically, I would load up the replacement system, but since Smash finals was still taking place, I grabbed another system that I knew had 1.04 and left it by the stage and went on to attend other matters. I personally checked every system prior to the start of NCR to ensure that all updates have been properly made.
Note that USFIV can be acquired in a variety of ways. This replacement console was digitally upgraded to 1.04, which keeps the update on the internal hard drive. When a user puts in a game disc however, the Xbox reads the data off the disc rather than looking through the hard drive. When the Smash finals concluded, the team on stage swapped out to the Xbox I dropped off and put in an USFIV disc which made the Xbox default to original disc version 1.00, instead of 1.04 from the hard drive.
Unfortunately this was not noticed by our team nor the players that played the 4 matches on it. Soon as this was discovered, a discussion took place with a Capcom representative since this game is sanctioned by the rules of the Capcom Pro Tour. The rep made a decision that those 4 matches cannot count and must be replayed on the proper version being used throughout the entire tour. It was a difficult decision by the Capcom team, but I agree with it completely.
It is the tournament organizer’s duty to ensure the proper version is being used and I take full responsibility for this mistake. I dropped off the system knowing it had 1.04, but should have verified 1.04 was properly loaded up. This was a very difficult lesson learned and I encourage all other organizers to learn from my devastating mistake and to always check the version that is loaded up, even if you know the system has the latest version. I am truly sorry for this mistake as it has impacted the integrity of NCR and the tour.
8 players were deeply affected from this. The mental and emotional pressure of having to replay the matches again was completely unfair to them. One player specifically affected by this mistake was Kazunoko, as the result of his match was changed. As an apology, I would like to personally offer him a paid trip to SCR or another US premier event. I know this does not rectify the mistake, but it would give him the opportunity he deserves at another premier event.
Sincerely,
John
Source: Shoryuken