While there have been many criticisms of Bandai Namco’s latest release in the crown jewel of their fighting game IPs, Tekken 8, for the most part the game had pretty smooth sailing ever since its release at the start of the year. However, it seems things are slowly taking a turn for the worse in the past few weeks. While there is something to be said about Tekken’s willful blind-eye to its rage quitting problem, there is a more pressing matter to look towards. As we discussed in last month, Bandai Namco has begun striking down mod content in relation to Tekken 8, and it looks like that wasn’t a one time thing either.

hellyea…

Namco started banning all mod videos.
Everyone had fun so far.

I might run away to Patreon, but for now
I’m going to take a break and see what happens.

If you want my past mods, please come to my discord server : https://t.co/zPzoqbRKr4 pic.twitter.com/6SnAaMtcfb

— UMIN(우민) (@_UMIN__) March 26, 2024

As shown above, Korean modder UMIN, who did some great and fun mods for Tekken 8 such as adding Cyberpunk 2077 clothing to the character customizer that many players find a bit lacking, had his Youtube channel essentially wiped from the platform for showing off some of his custom content.

Soon pic.twitter.com/BpPmHV8cvB

— UMIN(우민) (@_UMIN__) March 19, 2024

These mods are, essentially, harmless but Bandai Namco has now made it abundantly clear that they are mobilizing against them. While players can’t exactly pinpoint an exact reason as to why they would do this, the smart money is on Bandai Namco wanting players to not mod any costumes into the game and instead focus on spending money on the in-game shop they added to Tekken 8 in the post-release.

The in-game shop has been a point of concern for the community ever since it was launched, with many players accusing Bandai of intentionally keeping the feature out of the game on launch to avoid bad word of mouth on release, only to add it later; a have-their-cake-and-eat-it-too moment. The drama got to the point where Katsuhiro Harada himself responded to a critical tweet about the subject back in February, though this did little to quell concerns about the store.

Development costs are now 10 times more expensive than in the 90’s and more than double or nearly triple the cost of Tekken 7. Even the Fight Lounge servers are costly to maintain. In the past there weren’t so many specs and there wasn’t online. Plus they didn’t have such high…

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) February 21, 2024

Now, the store is one thing, but striking down content regarding mods for the game is another blow to custom content created by the community. One can only wonder how far Bandai Namco will go to make additional sales in addition to the $70 price tag already attached to the game.