Capcom doesn’t want the name “YouPorn” affiliated with its fighting game tournament.
Above: This is now a PG-13 shirt!
The publisher is prohibiting Ultra Street Fighter IV pro Valentin “Valmaster” Petit of France from donning his official Team YP (for Team YouPorn) jersey during the upcoming 2015 Capcom Cup Finals. Capcom is holding the event at the PlayStation Experience this weekend in San Francisco, and Valmaster has qualified for this championship playoff. But while he isn’t allowed to wear “YouPorn” on his shirt, his sponsor has found a clever way around the ban. Team YP now has a new jersey that is exactly like the old one with one minor difference: It has a pixelated box over where the porn site’s logo used to appear.
“I am proud to wear the Team YP jersey,” Valmaster said in a statement. “And I want to represent them at tournaments.”
And it makes sense that Valmaster would want to go to bat for his sponsor, since he’s much more likely to make money from that partnership than from tournament winnings. That’s just the nature of esports.
We’ve asked Capcom for an explanation about why it is making this move to prohibit one of its player’s sponsors, and we’ll update with any comment from the company. But it seems likely that this is about keeping a dividing line between porn and Capcom’s products.
As for Team YP, it sounds like the company is happy to appease the concerns of tournament organizers.
“We’re always asked if there is a place for porn in esports,” Team YP operations boss Brad Burns said in a statement. “Our answer is and always has been that Team YP has virtually nothing to do with the adult industry, and we’ve made a considerable effort to keep the team separate from our core business. With this new design, I believe we’ve made it clear that we respect the concerns of the industry with regards to our sponsorship.”