You can play Street Fighter 6 right now, close to six months before its launch date, as long as you don’t mind being naughty and searching for an unofficial version of the game.

Long before even half the characters planned for Street Fighter 6 became playable during betas, before trailers for the entire cast was released, people were picking apart the game and its mechanics. They are training, and even playing online via third-party tools, getting ready for the full launch of the game in illicit online backrooms. For many Street Fighter 6, or at least a very early version of it, has been out for months.

For months now, clever minds behind the curtain have been tinkering away with Street Fighter 6 files made publicly accessible thanks to betas allowing a select few to test the game early. Due to an unfortunate flaw in the files provided to PC players, a select few were able to break down barriers designed to prevent people playing past the beta period.

This started off as a relatively niche problem, as only those with access to the PC beta (and knowledge of the ‘cracked’ version of the game) were able to break back into the closed, beta version of Street Fighter 6. However, since this first test period in October, the breach has widened thanks to the continued efforts of online modders. Now, anyone can download a super early version of Street Fighter 6 – as long as they know where…