Years of Tekken has desensitised me to fighting oddball opponents, considering a panda and a bear are two of its most iconic characters. No amount of kangaroos, space ninjas and old doctors butt-sliding across stages could have prepared me for what hackers have been doing in Tekken 8 online matches, however: Cloaking themselves inside menacingly large objects.

It appears hackers are using some of the in-game customisation and blowing them up to proportions unattainable in the game's normal boundaries, craftily hiding their player model. Not only does it make it impossible to see which move is being performed, but it makes it incredibly difficult for their opponent-slash-victim to get any reasonable hits or punishments in. 

Clips of the dastardly fighters have begun to circulate on Twitter, with two in particular doing the rounds across the community. One video shows a Yoshimitsu player—a character that is already notoriously, as I like to say, yoinky-sploinky—hiding inside a giant hot-pink tophat complete with matching giant fairy wings. Brief glimpses of his legs can be seen as the opposing Lili wails on him, but for the most part he's completely enveloped inside the headwear.

The second one will perhaps give Soulcalibur 6 rainbow box victims a pang of empathy, with what appears to be a giant metal box covering even more of the screen than the winged tophat. Not only is the hacker totally unseeable, but so is their health bar, rank, name, and current win streak. 

Director Katsuhiro Harada responded to the latter clip earlier this week to say "These are just cheats and we will ban them." While it's unknown if these two offenders have been smacked with the banhammer, it does seem as though the team is working to get rid of these hackers. A tweet from one of the official Tekken accounts reads "We've suspended accounts involved in malicious and unauthorized activities, with penalties ranging from temporary to indefinite bans for: Intentional disconnects, cheating, use of unauthorized mods or cracks, Inappropriate customizations or player names." 

Hopefully the team continues to clean up some of the more frustrating behaviour occurring. Even outside of these hacks, complaints around opponents rage quitting mid-match, win trading to boost online ranks and then using said position on the leaderboard to spew racial hate via their usernames have been rife. With Tekken 8 being out for almost two months now, I sincerely hope the banwaves occur more frequently and better penalties get implemented to deter future would-be cheaters.