Here's Why Capcom Is Getting Roasted For Its Street Fighter 6 Logo
You might have seen the Street Fighter 6 logo, reproduced above, on this very page yesterday. We posted about the teaser for Capcom's next entry in its seminal fighting game series, and the thumbnail for said post was in fact the logo for the game, borrowed directly from the end of the teaser.
Well, we may not have been the only ones doing some borrowing there. Ars Technica's Aurich Lawson tweeted (below) late yesterday about his discovery of an extremely similar-looking logo on the Adobe Stock image repository. The logo on the Adobe directory was created by a user named "xcoolee," and while Capcom's Street Fighter 6 creation bears numerous differences compared to xcoolee's original, the similarities are plain to see.
We reached out to xcoolee to ask whether Capcom had actually licensed the logo from Adobe, but they replied that they did not know either way. They also commented that they're interested in getting Capcom to license the logo directly from them for exclusive use, but are having some difficulty reaching the company.The new Street Fighter 6 logo is $80 on Adobe's Stock site
— Aurich (@aurich) February 21, 2022
I don't even know what to say. I knew it was generic but I didn't realize it was this bad. They searched for "SF" on a stock logo site and rounded a couple corners and added the 6
I cannothttps://t.co/SViXFjElou pic.twitter.com/yOzYePaYfV
From the moment the trailer dropped, a segment of fans immediately derided the new logo. It is more-or-less inarguable that the new logo is a huge departure from previous iconography associated with Street Fighter. It has a monochrome and minimalistic, almost military look, while previous logos for Street Fighter games have been downright florid. It's understandable that long-time fans of the series might dislike it, although this writer finds it sort-of refreshing.
This writer's expectation is that the game was announced long before Capcom really has anything to show for it, and some designer was in a desperate hurry to prepare a logo for the game. A simple design like the one shown is very easy to animate in a kinetic way, as you can see at the end of the teaser trailer. Seeing the logo in the Adobe database, said Capcom employee likely paid the $80 (or more likely, 9200¥) and slapped together the ending animation in a day's work.
It's also possible that, rather than being a slap-dash last-minute effort, the new iconography could instead be indicative of a new direction for Street Fighter 6. Yoshinori Ono, the man who could reasonably be called custodian of the series at Capcom for the last 30 years, has left the company, and in his final statement said that he left Street Fighter 6 to "a new generation" to create. The art style in the trailer, both for the 2D and 3D elements, doesn't resemble anything in previous Street Fighter games, so it could well be that this change is quite intentional.
