Thankfully, Fightcade is pretty darn good and people have been developing solutions to getting other fighters working well online. Couple this with Discord and there are plenty of little micro communities for playing darn near any fighting game and most of them don't care about the FGC Cock. Most don't even know it exists and as long as those communities stay small and unimportant then it's all good.
I guess the big problem is e-Sports. Getting fighting games on the main stage, in the spotlight, on par with LoL and Overwatch and Fortnite and shit and well...that wasn't happening anyway. Capcom and Namco have tried their best on their own with Capcom even censoring their own shit so SF5 could be shown on ESPN and it just didn't take. Despite fighting games arguably being the original e-Sport they just don't work in that environment. Not yet anyway.
The Riot Games fighter will come out and regardless of how shit it is it will likely dominate the e-Sports fighting game scene because Riot and Chinabux and that will be that. Honestly? Can't wait to see the drama. I wonder how much of the FGC will fawn over it regardless of quality and how many will take a massive dump on it...or what the damn thing will even be like. Hopefully the dumbfucks in charge have learned how Mirror Matches work by now (my number one beef with LoL: I'm sorry, I paid $15 for this snake woman and NOW you tell me I'm not allowed to use the character I paid $15 for and if I quit it's bad sportsmanship and if I suck because snake woman in my main and I dunno anyone else it's all MY fault? Fuck you your game is trash).
The problem with fighting games as an esport will always be the same problem - the fighting games themselves.
- Matches are really, really short and the same "round" is essentially played multiple times. If the players don't switch characters between games (and they frequently don't) - you can see the same matchup 15+ times in a row, or more, depending on how the set is evolving and how long is it.
- Some fighting games have a very solid "meta" - meaning you'll have the same matchup mentioned previously mentioned show up
even more times.
- Modern Fighting Games are typically designed with a "comeback" mechanic (Ultra Meter, V-Trigger, Rage Mode/Arts) that makes comebacks pretty boring and common.
- Fighting Games also don't employ a ton of strategy, because a round is only 99 seconds at absolute most. There aren't huge variations on how different players play the same characters. You'll
occasionally get to see some mind games in a BO5 or BO7, but it isn't common.
- Fighting Games typically get "solved" pretty early on - although the meta evolves there's usually a slew of "best" characters that you'll always see in high level competitions.
- Fighting Game tournaments aren't super common so you also see tons of the same players at every single event, even for different games. You could realistically watch Justin Wong win MvC2 for 8 years straight.
- Fighting Games typically employ tons of advanced concepts (cancels, kara throws, loops, resets, etc) that aren't easily readable for people not super invested in the genre.
I think that League (and Dota, Overwatch) fare much better because they're longer games that are much more easily readable to a "normal" viewer. Even if you don't understand all of the specifics of League/Dota (all of the characters, roles, matchups) it's very easy to see the objective of "destroy the enemy base" and watch how the players work towards that goal. Same for Overwatch - the goal is pretty clearly defined as are the roles (big man with shield, girl with healing ray, person with sniper rifle). Because you have so many players (10 for League, 12 for OW) the dynamic changes much easier between matches and they feel much different from one another compared to Fighting Games.