Two weeks ago, a Tekken player created a mod that allowed users to play the game online with rollback netcode, sparking a community-wide debate between Western players and competitors based in Japan and Korea.
The mod, made by a community member named Ekspym, became an instant hit among Tekken players, reaching more than 10,000 players as of October 17 and a recorded 4,547 downloads as of October 15. According to the mod’s readme, “the package contains neither the PS3 firmware nor the game,” though it acts essentially like an emulator.
It sparked a viral conversation regarding the current state of Tekken 8 (with many players seeming to prefer Tekken 6 out of the two games), but perhaps more surprisingly, received massive pushback from players in Japan and Korea.
One of the loudest voices speaking out against this mod was celebrated fighting game pro Dogura. “The pirated version of Tekken 6? That thing crosses the line way too much, and I’m horrified that no one overseas is raising negative voices about it,” he wrote in a post on Twitter/X. “When our fundamental values and sense of morality differ this much, we probably can’t even have a conversation. I’m praying that the right response is taken.”
Another Japanese user named Higemura also had a viral take on the situation, worrying that the Tekken series might end due to mods such as this one. “It seems like you’re running the Tekken 6 service without permission, but the people doing it should really think about what they’re actually up to. If the population flows over there and money stops going to the official service, the Tekken series will come to an end, right?” they wrote.
“I totally get having an attachment to Tekken 6, since I love the bound system and move balance too, but if that’s the case, you should develop a new fighting game that’s Tekken 6-like. The way things are going now, you’re just infringing on rights and gobbling up Bandai Namco’s assets and potential customers without permission.”
Overall, it seems that Japanese players take copyright very seriously and consider such mods to be outright theft. This attitude is also reflected from some players based in Korea, with one Korean user likening it to sexual assault. (Another Japanese player even compared it to necrophilia, while another made a baffling comparison to the Civil Rights Movement.)
This, of course, prompted a massive discussion that has taken hold of the broader fighting game community. The attitudes toward such mods are far more lenient among Western players, with one writing, “Please tell me how I am supposed to ‘properly’ support the game when I cannot even buy it here? If I take a broken old bike out of the trash and repair it, why are you saying I am stealing from the bike corporation? It was trash. There was no way to buy it!”
“Explain why it is more morally righteous to demand people to pay for used copies of an old game on the secondhand market that the developers won’t see any money from,” another said.
Ekspym’s Tekken 6 mod is still alive and well, and has not yet received any pushback from Bandai Namco — though it has, inadvertently, exposed a very intriguing difference in opinions about emulation and modding between Western fighting game players and those based in East Asia.
(It is worth noting, though, that some Japanese players are pushing back against this mindset, with one even pointing out a pro player using a cracked arcade cabinet in response to Dogura’s initial tweet.)
This is the latest Tekken-related news to go viral after Baki’s Yujiro Hanma was finally shown off at Evo France, and he’s just as terrifying as we expected him to be.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
