Tekken 8 Season 2 triggers record-low Steam numbers ahead of Emergency Patch

Tekken 8's numbers hit an all-time low on Steam following the launch of an incredibly unpopular Season 2 update a fortnight ago. An impending "emergency patch" is set to go live which could be make or break for the game's popularity for the coming months.

While Tekken 8 Season 2's launch did introduce new moves for every character, it also welcomed abusable strings and combos that left players feeling powerless. The addition of new trackable mid moves also made sidestepping less viable, making the game harder on defense despite the devs stating that Tekken 8 Season 2 update would buff defense.

On Monday, April 14, Tekken 8 dropped to 6,040 players for their 24-hour peak according to Steam DB. Player activity plummeted following the launch of Season 2.

News of Tekken 8's plans for the emergency patch on April 15 did little to bring life to the game, with players and creators voicing their fears for the road ahead.

Tekken players have even begun returning to play Tekken 7, with numbers for the previous entry in the Tekken franchise doubling since the launch of the controversial Season 2.

The launch of Tekken 8 Season 2 saw 24-hour peak players rise to 16,000 on Steam, the highest ever since the initial launch of the game. However, the baseline players have now dropped to less than pre-Season 2, a worrying sign for the future of the FGC title.

Despite dwindling player numbers, there is still hope that Bandai Namco have a few tricks up their sleeves for the Tekken 8 Season 2 emergency patch launching on April 17. In their official post on April 14, they only shared their broad stroke changes, but made no mention of character-specific nerfs.

The characters the community will most likely want hit with the nerf hammer in the emergency Season 2 patch are Yoshimitsu, King, Clive, Jin and Nina.

Another major issue players are hoping will be hard nerfed in the full patch notes is the extreme plus frames of many of the new moves added in Tekken 8 Season 2. If the Tekken 8 devs can deliver on fixing these big offenders now, the community might take it on the chin and stick around.

However, if Bandai Namco misses on the majority of the aforementioned characters and the wider plus-frames problem, it's looking grim for Tekken 8. In particular because the next balance patch not due until mid-May according to the developers.

To make matters worse, given we only just had Anna added on April 1, it's also unlikely Bandai Namco will release a new character any time soon as a peace offering. Based on recent community sentiment, let's hope they brought the goodies.

In the last 30 days, Tekken 8 has received over 4,000 negative reviews, 92% of all reviews in that period. Based on recent reviews, it maintains its Overwhelmingly Negative status. As for it's overall review score, it sits at Mixed with 45% of all reviews negative.

The wave of negative comments began with the release of Tekken 8 Season 2 on April 1. For Tekken 8 players, the release of Season 2 carried with it the hope for new content and fresh balance changes that the community was in dire need of. However, the Season 2 update that dropped on April Fool's Day, did ironically turn out to be a joke, but an unintentional one.

Season 2 brought with it a wave of issues which were summed up perfectly by professional player Bae "Knee" Jae-min in his brutal Season 2 feedback.

On Steam, Street Fighter 6 remains miles ahead of the pack. The game, released in June 2023, consistently reaches over 30,000 concurrent players on Steam at peak now close to 2 years after the launch of the game. That has been achieved with minimal major balance updates to the base game outside of the introduction of new characters such as Mai and Terry from Fatal Fury.

Tekken 8's Season 2 emergency patch launches in less than 48 hours, let us hope Bandai Namco know what they're doing. If not, well even Tekken 7 didn't really take off until its third year.