Bandai Namco’s flagship fighting game franchise Tekken has enjoyed a great amount of success ever since the latest entry in the series, Tekken 8, released late last month. But just because the ship is sailing doesn’t mean the seas aren’t rocking the boat a bit, Tekken 8 has been the subject of various leaks and rumors surrounding it ever since its announcement, and the subject of its DLC characters are no different. Initially, we covered a pretty prevalent rumor that Tekken 8’s first season of DLC would include Eddy Gordo, Roger the Kangaroo, Armor King, and a newcomer named Xiao Meng, however, it seems that another rumored DLC character roster has reared its head, and this one has the data to back it up.

As reported by Eventhubs, a dataminer has seemingly poked around the files of Tekken 8’s full release and has found evidence that the DLC characters may be a bit different than what everyone is expecting.

DLC S1 Spoiler thread for #TEKKEN8

For those unfamiliar, I confirmed and debunked several leaks during the CNT (see quote tweet). I will be using the same methods for this.

If you share this, PLEASE be courteous of others and only RT this first post.https://t.co/V5y5Dg8DnU

— :thinking: (@shootmans) January 27, 2024

As shown by this leaker, Shootmans who previously leaked several members of Tekken 8’s base roster last year, believes that the first round of Tekken DLC characters will be as follows: Eddy Gordo, Lidia Sobieska, Craig Marduk, and Fahkumram. Eddy Gordo has already been confirmed as DLC so that much is obvious, but Shootmans backs up his claims for the rest in his Twitter thread where he combs over the game’s files and comes to his conclusions.

With Eddy having already been announced, we can see clues to him in the strings. Capoeira is listed as a fighting style in the text for the character select screen. Brazil is also listed as a country of origin for a character. pic.twitter.com/BjU2CtLvcv

— :thinking: (@shootmans) January 27, 2024

We have new evidence for Marduk, the text from the CNT is still there in the same place as last time…https://t.co/Yp0PtL3FX0

— :thinking: (@shootmans) January 27, 2024

A Muay Thai fighter from Thailand. Fahk fans who aren’t tier whores, rejoice. All 3 of you. Sorry, Bruce enjoyers. He’s dead. 😢 pic.twitter.com/Gxzd05QczS

— :thinking: (@shootmans) January 27, 2024

This is 100% Lidia. Couldn’t find a fighting style, but doesn’t matter. She was sort of a T8 character trapped in T7 I think. pic.twitter.com/DqbtHJ5tju

— :thinking: (@shootmans) January 27, 2024

As with any possible leak, this is not confirmed to be true and should be taken as rumors and speculation until something more concrete turns up, though if this is true then that is genuinely surprising. Eddy is a fan favorite so he was a shoo-in to make it back. Lidia is somewhat liked, though her gameplay in Tekken 7 made her a bit divisive. Marduk is a bit of a weird case where many people seem to not really think much about him. Most alarmingly however, Fahkumram is universally disliked among the Tekken community, so his addition to the game will likely stir some feelings of disdain.

But again, this evidence is not concrete and Shootmans’ roster predictions last year weren’t 100% on the mark either, so this is still all mere speculation. Hopefully, this leak proves false, as it is a very underwhelming roster for Tekken 8‘s first season pass of DLC.