Capcom USA's Street Fighter evangelist Seth Killian leaves

Fighting game scholar Seth Killian leaves Capcom USA.

Community manager, EVO Championship Series co-founder, Special Combat Advisor, and Street Fighter expert Seth Killian says he will be leaving Capcom USA at the end of the week to pursue a "new path."

Killian, who joined Capcom in 2006 to help promote and advise on Street Fighter IV, announced his plans to leave the company on the Capcom Unity blog.

"I have chosen a new path which will let me embrace a new dream, but to everyone that ever believed in this dream we shared together, let me say this final thanks," Killian wrote in his farewell post. "I will leave as I began--a Capcom fan for life, looking forward to all the great games still to come."

While at Capcom, Killian evangelized the publisher's fighting game revival with Street Fighter IV, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter X Tekken, serving as its front-facing spokesperson and community liaison.

"To everyone that's helped me along my path, I'm left only with words that seem hollow from overuse, but: Thank You."

Killian is a longtime fighting game fan, having played Street Fighter II and its numerous sequels and incarnations competitively since 1991. In his goodbye letter to the Capcom community, he calls his introduction to Street Fighter II "love at first sight."

"Even at the height of my early fan fever dreams, however, I could never have guessed that this game would take me around the world," Killian wrote. "From my first fumblings with the fireball, to battling for local arcade supremacy, and even on to competing in Japan, I still never let myself imagine I could someday meet, much less work alongside the people responsible for these games. To think back on the fact that it's been my real life for these years is hard for me to believe, even now."

Killian helped found the EVO fighting game tournament with Joey "MrWizard" Cuellar and Tony and Tom Cannon, which has since grown into a major worldwide competition for serious fighting game fans. Killian regularly provides color commentary for best-of-the-best match ups. Perhaps his most well-known EVO commentary comes from EVO 2004, when Daigo Umehara and Justin Wong infamously faced each other in Street Fighter III: Third Strike.

"At the time I came on, fighters were few and far between, and Street Fighter had been asleep for a long time," Killian wrote on Capcom Unity. "Through the combination of some great games and an incredible community, I'm happy to think that we've hit that early target--fighting games are strong again--perhaps stronger than they've ever been before."

Killian hasn't said what his next move will be.