A portion of the Tekken 8 community is expressing concern over the recently announced Iron Fist Store, a gateway to paid cosmetics that will provide a steady supply of classic character costumes and other cool items for players to purchase using in-game currency. What’s the big problem? These will not be present at launch.
The reasons for people’s anger are multifaceted and raise some real questions about how exactly modern fighting games should be monetized. These cosmetics didn’t just come out of nowhere, players are having a lot of fun dressing up their favorite characters, are people asking for something unrealistic? Or maybe publisher Bandai Namco has whipped out a game? Let’s break it down.
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Before we discuss when the in-game store will be released, let’s take a look at what the store will actually offer players and how the development team is presenting this new addition. Players can purchase in-game currency with real money, and for traditional skins for fighters (such as Jin’s Tekken 4 drip), we’re talking about $4 per skin. Now, compared to Tekken 8’s competition, that’s not too bad — just look at Street Fighter 6’s recent ridiculous pricing of TMNT cosmetics — but it’s still better than what Tekken games have offered in the past. The price is higher.
The developer did acknowledge this, and the producers Michael Murray made the following remarks during a Tekken Talk live broadcast: “We would like to ask everyone to update their ideas and adapt to the current game development environment and game sales methods.
“The game is much more expensive to make than Tekken 7, several times the cost of current gaming platforms. So when we went with some of the traditional costumes that people were asking for […] You can’t just take these assets from Tekken 4 and stick them into current-gen hardware and make it look good.
“We’re not charging a ridiculously high price. The point we want to make is that it’s not going into Bandai Namco’s coffers. We want to improve the game with these updates that are available for free. To do that, we have A big development team, we have to pay for that. That’s how we use those funds to try to make the game better, rather than making money for the sake of making money.”
OK, that’s a very blunt and direct explanation of the situation, and an attempt to attack the (seemingly foreseen) community outrage from the start. Indeed, the Tekken series has thus far avoided most of the monetization trends in modern games. After all, Tekken 7 first launched in arcades back in 2015, so it’s been sustained by consistent DLC character releases. Like it or not, games being made today are incentivized to make players spend money.
But does that mean Bandai Namco’s hands are completely clean? Not really! First, Tekken 8 isn’t exactly a free-to-play, live-service game, it’s a subset of games where consistent monetization is widely accepted as a cost of business. Tekken 8 costs $70, which is a lot of money
Furthermore, if reports that the game has sold around 2 million copies are accurate, then Bandai Namco has definitely struck gold with Tekken 8 so far. Will the coins you earn through the game be worthless from now on and can only be used for base game cosmetics? If so, that’s bad. There’s no way to sugarcoat it.
Then there is the reality when This is announced. As stated at the beginning of the article, the Tekken 8 store did not exist at launch. The game launched without it, and there wasn’t any hint of it being added until the game was released. The in-game store and post-launch cosmetic DLC plans aren’t something you decide to do on a whim. This has been a well-known feature for some time and has been intentionally kept low-key.
We, like many media outlets and influencers, reviewed Tekken 8. We, like many others, gave it a rave review. As the author of this review, I think even with this store, I would probably still give it a five-star rating – I personally am not bothered by the addition of this store, nor do I think it would lower the score I gave it – But I will definitely mention it. The existence of an in-game store is something players should know before making a purchase, no matter how fair or unfair the pricing is.
Maybe this is just the Tekken 8 team taking into account the realities of modern AAA game development and trying their best not to push players too far. Fighting games are expensive, and it’s clear that efforts are already being made to soften the blow. But there’s a sneaky stench surrounding it – announced on a live stream that only a small portion of the Tekken community will see.
As for how shocking Tekken 8 MTX will be when it finally lands in the near future, we’ll just have to wait and see. But this development left a sour taste in people who had been overjoyed by the game’s stellar launch.
