Tekken project executive game director Katsuhiro Harada has spoken about Tekken 8’s issue with “pluggers” – those who disconnect mid-match when they’re about to lose in order to avoid recording a loss – and stated that improvements are coming.
As PC Gamer reports, Harada spoke about the issue during the recent Tekken Talk Live Post-Release Roadmap broadcast. Translated by producer Michael Murray, Harada admitted that there’s no “perfect solution” to the issue, but “we’re trying to improve it” to at least display accurate disconnect ratios on players’ profiles. This should help flag up when players disconnect from matches regularly, and allow others to decline ranked matches against them if they wish.
However, this is only the beginning, as there are plans to eventually start enforcing bans for regular rage quitters, too. Before that happens though, the team needs to “be careful” and take a few extra steps to ensure that it can go ahead with the action.
“Obviously, we want to ban these people from the game,” he said. “But there’s a lot of legal protections in various countries and different manners around the world. So we’re just being very careful that we have all of that kind of paperwork and the methodology that’s necessary to remove these people from the game servers before we go through with the bans. It will happen, please be patient.”
Harada then clarified that those with shaky internet won’t have to worry about getting banned for their game getting disconnected due to a bad connection. “This is [for] people who are constantly doing it, so if you just have that rare occasion, you don’t have to worry about it,” Murray translated.
Right now, it’s not clear when players can expect these changes to roll out, but rest assured that the problem has been acknowledged and improvements are on the way.
For more games like Tekken 8, be sure to check out our recommendations for the best fighting games, as well as the best multiplayer PC games.