Videos from popular Tekken 8 mod creators have begun getting taken down by Bandai Namco. These videos, which typically showcase model replacements or other mods for the popular fighting game, have started receiving attacks from the game’s publisher in an attempt to discourage modded copies of the game.

The strikes were first reported by Twitter user UMIN, who noticed that several of his popular Tekken 8 mod showcase videos had been struck:

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

A few short hours later, Bandai Namco struck down more of UMIN’s videos, which resulted in their channel being set for deletion in April:

Okay, My channel will be deleted in April.
Thank you Bamco.

They banned the unpublished video at least three hours ago. Thanks to them, my channel will be deleted in April.

Goodbye Youtube… pic.twitter.com/b50hCEF625

— UMIN(우민) (@_UMIN__) March 26, 2024

Another Tekken 8 YouTuber, IAMOP, shared similar strikes on their own channels:

Just checked, I also got hit for a mod compilation and a boss move set showcase (this isn't even a mod and doesn't have any download links)
I wonder if they will copyright strike any gameplay videos that has mods or visual changes now? https://t.co/dco05WgC0I pic.twitter.com/V2rJmEGLgw

— IAMOP (@_IAMOP) March 26, 2024

As of yet, we haven’t seen any similar reports from other Tekken 8 modders, but this creator is unlikely to be the only one affected. This is likely in response to a recent debacle during a Street Fighter 6 tournament, during which one of the competitors used a nude Chun Li model that had been modded into their game.

While it makes sense for Bandai Namco to take action to prevent situations like the one mentioned above, it absolutely sucks to shut down big parts of your game’s community. Modding can bring life back to dead games and extend the longevity of games that already have an active player base like Tekken 8. Hopefully other developers and publishers can see the positive effect a modding community can have on their titles.

We’ll be sure to update if other creators get taken down as well.

In other Tekken 8 news, we recently got the chance to talk to Tekken Franchise Director Katsuhiro Harada where we asked him about pluggers, free DLC characters and more! You can check out our full interview here.

Thanks to scott1swann!