Despite a charismatic January launch Tekken 8 and its players have been continually afflicted by nefarious actors in online modes, something developers have been having a difficult time dealing with.
Though an initial round of bans were issues earlier this month, Bandai has followed up with even more account suspensions for more reasons.
We first heard about issues with rage quitters or “plugging” back in February when Director Katsuhiro Harada and Producer Michael Murray addressed the problem on an episode of Tekken Talk, noting that they were aware of what was going on and moving towards remedying the situation.
During this address they also mentioned how there are various legal hoops they’d need to be careful in passing through, given Tekken 8’s global presence and the fact that various countries have various laws when it comes to handing out bans (especially life-long ones).
More problematic practices came to Bandai’s attention in mid-March as they also called out another group of offenders who were manipulating custom costumes to obscure their characters from opponents.
They announced the following update to their ban and suspension practices on Thursday:
Account Suspensions Update
Accounts involved in unauthorized activities in #TEKKEN8 have been issued bans ranging from temporary to indefinite for:
• Intentional disconnections
• Cheating
• Glitching
• Rank boosting
• Inappropriate in-game & chat behavior, customizations & usernames
This action targets users who violated the End User License Agreement (EULA) after receiving multiple in-game reports. We plan to continue account suspensions after April. Further updates will be given as soon as new information is available.
Account Suspensions (2/2)
This action targets users who violated the End User License Agreement (EULA) after receiving multiple in-game reports.We plan to continue account suspensions after April. Further updates will be given as soon as new information is available.
— TEKKEN (@TEKKEN) March 28, 2024
In addition to all of this, Bandai seems to be simultaneously cracking down on modders who post footage of altered character models on YouTube as multiple channels have reported receiving copyright strikes for such practices.
It seems efforts will continue into April as Harada and his team at Bandai Namco aim to clean up the online Tekken 8 experience, thus additional restrictions and bans may be coming in the near future.