A freelance games journalist based in the Philippines, Cedric has written on all aspects of the esports industry, from the business side to the craziness happening in the FGC scene. He has written guides, op-eds, and essays for Dot Esports, IGN, and Gaming News.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
Image credit: EVO, RTS In recent years, developers have heavily tapped into the fighting game genre. Left and right, there seems to be a new game coming out, which took the fighting game community (FGC) by surprise, because the genre hadn't been touched by other developers not named Capcom, Bandai Namco, Arc System Works, SNK, or NetherRealm for a while.
So, what’s with the sudden shift? Is the community missing something? Perhaps a gold mine that the developers have found? I’m not so sure, but I think too many fighting games might not be in the community's best interest.
From divided player bases to hard-to-follow scenes, each new fighting game makes it difficult for spectators to navigate the esports scene. I’m here to talk about all of them, plus a couple of merits that I think are important!
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game takes the stage at #EVO2026 ! 📅 June 26 ⏰ 7:00 PM PT Featuring: ⚡ Exhibition Matches ⚡ Year One Character Reveal ⚡ Character Vote Candidates ⚡ Much more~ Get ready for the future, see you there! pic.twitter.com/U5I3AgpYDF
Let’s face it: alongside the real-time strategy scene, the fighting game community has one of the smallest player bases in esports. Basically, it’s niche .
While there’s an argument that it’s slowly regaining the flash of popularity it once had in the late 90’s, thanks to Street Fighter 6 , games like League of Legends and Counter-Strike have dominated the scene in its absence and have established themselves as the premier esports games. This leaves the FGC with fewer dedicated players and restricts its growth.
To give you some context, Street Fighter 6, arguably the most popular fighting game in the world right now, only has a 24-hour peak player count of 37,700, according to SteamDB . Counter-Strike 2, on the other hand, has 1.4 million. The gap is huge and just shows how niche the genre is. Introducing more fighting games into the mix will only divide the current player base, as most players tend to focus on one game, which pulls them away from the previous one.
Don't get me wrong, the casual audiences are blessed with all these games, but it may hurt the esports scene, and the main reason for that is the following point I want to discuss.
Image Credit: NY Chris G / X. In this context, the “Renaissance Man” refers to a person with deep expertise in multiple fighting games, often a top player in them, and I believe this era ended with the introduction of Pro Tour circuits such as the Capcom Pro Tour and the Tekken World Tour. Because of these circuits, prize money for the games they support has also shot up.
So, the natural progression would be to simply focus on one thing and ignore the other, considering that you can win big money anyway.
See, the main reason people were doing the Renaissance Man approach back then was that fighting game tournaments paid p…