Street Fighter 6 community divided over Rashid being available at EVO 2023

Rashid, the very first DLC character coming to Street Fighter 6, will be available to play at EVO 2023. While some are excited to see him on the big stage, many others are worried he’ll be overpowered, saying a week and a half isn’t long enough to learn the character.

Street Fighter 6 has had one of the biggest fighting game launches ever. For many, it’s been seen as a huge resurgence for one of the most iconic and long-standing franchises in fighting game history.

With rave reviews and a massive playerbase at its back, it’s no surprise to see Street Fighter 6 as one of the games headlining the upcoming EVO 2023 tournament. And it’s got a record-breaking number of signups to boot, with over 9000 players competing in the Street Fighter 6 category.

However, the choice for Rashid, the game’s first DLC character, to be legally playable at EVO 2023 despite coming out less than two weeks before the tournament has sparked backlash amongst competitors.

Rashid leaves Street Fighter 6 players at EVO 2023 worried

Modern fighting games are all about maintaining some semblance of balance between all the characters on a title’s available roster. The genre has grown far past the days of old, where every character tended to be broken in their own way, and modern titles like SF6 are very tightly tuned and designed.

The same could be said of Tekken 7, arguably Street Fighter’s biggest direct competitor in the space. However, as Tekken 7 has showed in the past, new characters can be a balance disaster if they’re released in a broken state.

Where Fakhumram and Leroy dominated Tekken 7 on release and were omnipresent, many are concerned that Rashid could end up being just as strong. If he’s really that good on release, players may not have enough time to cook up a good counter or get his kit figured out in time.

If Rashid isn’t that great, and players don’t have enough time to figure out how to best use his kit, then it won’t be a huge issue. However, if he is extremely strong, players are concerned they may have to drop their main in order to pick up the character.

“Damn imagine paying $150 for late registration, flying across the world, to get randomed out in pools by a who-we-know-will-be-top-tier Rashid” one Twitter user replied.

Meanwhile, fighting game commentator Sajam is just excited to see what happens as chaos ensues.

“Good luck to everyone! (nefarious) That’s hilarious, I love it.”

Going off of his trailer, though, Rashid already looks pretty strong. He’s got high mobility and enough killer lows to give him great potential for mix-ups and giving players who aren’t experienced at playing against him a hard time.

Nonetheless, this news hasn’t lessened the excitement of most players to see a fan-favorite character from Street Fighter 5 making such a quick return to the series.