Bandai Namco’s Tekken 8 has been under a bit of fire as of late. The latest entry in Bandai Namco’s flagship fighting game IP has been under harsh scrutiny since its release earlier in the year, with many of its dedicated playerbase having issues with the core gameplay of the game and the heat mechanics that the game introduced. One would think that the revival of Heihachi Mishima, the main antagonist of the franchise as a whole, would turn some heads towards a more positive vibe but even his revival was met with skepticism, and now the latest news about Tekken 8’s DLC has Katsuhiro Harada himself apologizing on Twitter.

I understand that the community has some questions about the release of this stage DLC.
As the person in charge of the TEKKEN franchise, I apologize.

It was made clear from the beginning that the Year One Pass (Season Pass) would not include stages, BUT even so, when the Lidia…

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) October 1, 2024

The long and short of it is that a new stage, the Buddhist temple that Heihachi trains at in the story, is separate DLC. Even players who paid for a season past don’t get it as part of the pass, and have to pay for it separately. In most fighting games this isn’t too big of a deal, as stages are set dressing, however in Tekken the stages are arguably just as important as the characters themselves as the gameplay drastically changes depending on where on the stage you are, if the stage has breakable floors/walls, if the stage even has walls at all, etc. So to sell it in such a way is basically extracting an extra nickel from everyone, including those who shelled out the extra cash for the season pass.

I think I failed to create an organizational structure that would allow me to oversee things beyond my own position. One of my roles was to listen to the opinions of the Community and reflect them not only in the content but also in the out-game, but I was clearly becoming passive, worrying about the relationships between companies and not exercising my role.

As shown above, Harada himself regrets how the situation has turned out and is no-so-subtly placing the blame for this muck up at the feet of Bandai Namco, who most people would be blaming anyway. Hopefully Harada is able to make true on his promise to better organize the development team for Tekken 8 and make it a game that values its community as it used to be.