Balance changes + Akuma release is going to bring back a lot of players on May 22nd.
If we look at the
steamDB page for the game we can see that ever since the Ed release, the game(at least on PC) has been daily played more at peak hours(Asia timezone).
The Ed release saw a
46k daily peak while the launch peak was
70k.
With Akuma being ten times more popular than Ed and balance changes+costumes for DLC characters...
It is within the realm of possibility that more players could be playing at the same time than on launch, at least on PC.
Which would be crazy for a fighting game that would be nearly a year old.
SF6 really has repaired almost all the damage done to the IP by launch SF5.