Combo Breaker 2026 was a sad reminder that FGC is still bad for women.

I reached out to Jax to ask for more details about the incident, and he revealed that it happened while he was waiting for his 2XKO set. While he was standing he decided to fix his cosplay, that’s when the thief struck.

Luckily, he had a friend who stepped in the way, actually stopping the boy, who then ran away. Unfortunately, neither he nor his friend knew who was responsible.

Miranda “Super_Yan” Pakozdianother woman who attended the event, also faced harassment, but this time, from the staff. According to her tweet, she was given a spectator badge because she is a woman, even though she says she is a competitor and is in her early twenties.

In the next tweet, he said that this has happened to him many times and that he did this because it was too common. Although he understands that some people who work in competitions, especially big competitions, are volunteers, it doesn’t change that these situations make him uncomfortable.

According to him: “Years of this and it’s always a message that I don’t look like a fighter, or I don’t belong here, or I shouldn’t be taken seriously. It doesn’t make sense!”

During our conversation about the Combo Breaker 2026 incident, I asked Jax if he had been bullied in the past five years at local venues or tournaments. He pointed out that there has never been any overt abuse after COVID. He added that nothing crazy or devastating has happened to him recently until Combo Breaker 2026.

I also asked her about the worst case of sexism she experienced/witnessed, and she revealed that it was not a good time to be a woman in the scene before 2020.

He said it came back when it was playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimateand the boys would “accidentally” kick the chair as they passed by him when their friend got off the dock. He also mentioned that there were times when he had to lose sets on purpose because he was afraid of the men’s reaction if he actually won.

Unfortunately, during that time, his experience was not unique. In 2020, the Super Smash Bros community experienced the #MeToo movement where victims of abuse came forward to expose the bad apples. Jax is one of the women who stood up and exposed her abuser. Outside of the Super Smash Bros. community, the massive FGC also faced a major setback when Evo 2020 was canceled due to sexual misconduct allegations leveled against its founder, Joey “MrWizard” Cuellar.

Discrimination like this is not visible from the outside. There has to be some kind of culture that is so rooted in the community and so mainstream that people don’t see it as offensive, especially to newcomers to the scene.

An Ars Technica article published in 2012, titled “Is gender mainstreaming taking the fighting game community back?” it gives us a glimpse of what the culture was like at that time. The article discusses Aris Bakhtanians, a competitor-turned-analyst-turned-broadcaster in the fighting game community.

During the Cross Assault event, a reality show-style tournament where two teams battled each other in Street Fighter x Tekken games, Bakhtanians made inappropriate comments about Pakozdi’s bra size and even suggested that he wanted to spy on her in the women’s restroom, ultimately leading to her becoming upset about the collaboration.

Pakozdi confronted him about his behavior, but he said it was clear that the Bakhtanians didn’t really care.

When asked about his inappropriate comments, Bakhtanians said that “those are jokes and if you were really a member of the fighting game community, you would know that,” and that “this is a community that is, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and sexual harassment is part of the culture, and if you take that away from the fighting game community, it’s not a Star gameCraft community.”

[Editor’s Note: I’m not surprised to hear rhetoric like this. The FGC prides itself on being raw, authentic, rough around the edges, and real. It’s not a polished scene with over-the-top productions. It comes from dudes grinding in grungy arcades, not caring they are ‘nerds.’ But let’s not bring the sexism aspect of that nostalgia with us.]

However, the tone of the Bakhtanians changed following the retreat. In a statement to Ars Technica, he apologized for what he said: “Unfortunately I used extreme examples in the heat of the moment and I feel that what I said did not speak to how I feel.”

Although the Bahktanians eventually apologised, this was big tell about the customs at that time. An Ars Technica article even mentioned the girlfriend of Jared Rea, Twitch’s Community Manager at the time, leaving the venue of a wrestling tournament after hearing the audience spew inappropriate or homophobic comments inside the tournament hall.

Jax also made this clear when I asked him why he thinks misogyny is still an FGC thing. He stated that he believes it comes from older men who miss the “good old days” when sports were still a boys’ club. He added that young men also fall into that toxic desire, which only adds to the problem.

Jax also said that instead of thinking and growing in their actions, some men just turn their anger into not liking the women who have joined their “club”.

“Instead of acknowledging that women joining the scene has created growth and accountability and protections that are inherently good things for the community/gaming industry as a whole, they just think ‘Well, in my day none of this existed and it wouldn’t work if things were already the way they were.'” Jax added.

I think everyone (normal) in the community agrees with me that no woman should be abused, physically or sexually, in FGC. However, it still happens. Sure, people can say that these were freak accidents or isolated incidents, but that’s washing your hands of still it happened. We should be ashamed as a society when things like this happen at our events.

With that being said, what needs to be changed? Pakozdi mentioned in his tweets that safety should be a priority. She added that people should stop thinking that women attend martial arts tournaments only as an extension of their partners or just men in general. Things like that can go a long way and make them feel like friends.

Jax, on the other hand, went after those who helped the abuse in the first place. He said that men should blame their friends for immoral behavior and end the “boy group mentality.”

He said: “It’s no longer ‘just a joke,’ it’s no longer ‘he’s just like that’ or ‘he’s still my boy.’ Don’t condone or condone bad behavior just because your friend or someone is good at the game.”

All of this being said, I still ask Jax if he thinks women should attend martial arts tournaments, and his answer is a resounding yes. He said this was the only positive experience he had at FGC, and that “the positives far outweigh the negatives in my opinion.”

He added: “You meet new people from all over the world, you can find artists and small businesses to support, you get valuable experience and practice in sports, you can try many new sports.

However, he also said that women should travel with friends and people they trust.

“It’s no different than being at a concert or a concert or any other big event for that matter,” Jax told Esports Insider. “A lot of situations that could have been worse were diffused by having friends to step in or take me back or work after.”

Finally, I asked Jax if there was anything she wanted to say to other women who have been victimized in the fighting game community: Here’s what she had to say:

“I am so sorry, and please know that you are not alone. There are many good, kind, supportive and caring people at FGC who are here to help.

“Please continue to speak out about abuse and discrimination. It’s the only way we can get the word out about it and be guided and hopefully corrected. Even in the last five years, it’s amazing to see how much the scene and events have progressed in terms of safety and inclusion. It can and will continue to get better and better.

“Even with my misfortune that I received from Combo Breaker this year, the outpouring of concern and support and love, I don’t think I can put into words how happy it was to have so many people’s attention, people I had never met or only knew came to look at me, which would not have happened if I had not spoken up.

“And it also encouraged others to be more vigilant – people were always on the alert to see for themselves and their friends, knowing that someone was scaring them. Of course, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but if you look at how everyone was condemning that behavior, I feel very confident that it won’t happen again in the future.”

We have to be careful to make sure that the women around us are comfortable. There is no excuse for sexual harassment of any kind in society, and we should be ashamed that it has existed for so long.

I know some people will say that they came to do feminism or politics and that they are in the community just to play but that’s how it is. See again you want to play games. What is stopping FGC from making a happy place for them too?

At the end of the day, we all love fighting games, and what better way to enjoy fighting games than to share them with the people around us?