Harada says Tekken 8 won’t have Denuvo, tells whining fans to 'stop your tedious allergic reactions to every single thing and sit quietly'

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA - JULY 21: Katsuhiro Harada waves to the crowd at the Tekken 8: The Art of Fighting panel at 2023 Comic-Con International: San Diego at San Diego Convention Center on July 21, 2023 in San Diego, California — (Image credit: Chelsea Guglielmino/FilmMagic)

Denuvo is everyone's least favourite anti-piracy software. The DRM, which comes as a sneaky passenger alongside games like Payday 3, Far Cry, and—inexplicably—Ghostwire: Tokyo, has been accused of causing performance issues (not without reason) in the games it comes with, and is generally regarded as an unwelcome guest pretty much wherever it's used.

So perhaps we should take heart, because although Tekken 8's EULA currently says the game will use Denuvo's anti-tampering tech, game director Katsuhiro Harada has come out and denied that's the case, in the strongest possible terms. In a response to a now-deleted tweet from a fan, Harada said the current Tekken 8 EULA is "probably simply a copy/paste of Tekken 7 or something," although he's not certain of that, and that he has "no plans to introduce Denuvo or anything else in Tekken 8".

He probably could have stopped there, but this is Katsuhiro Harada we're talking about, of 'busting into a guy's stream threatening to "SHOW my power"' fame, so—perhaps inevitably—he got a bit more colourful with it. I'm not sure what the tweet Harada was responding to originally said, but it clearly got his hackles up a bit. The game director implored the fan to "stop your tedious allergic reactions to every single thing and sit quietly". Then, in case you weren't clear, he added "(sit the hell down)."

Well, that's that then. Unless it's not. To be frank, despite Harada's vocal and vivid denial, I'm not sure I necessarily buy that Denuvo's absence from Tekken 8 is a sure thing. It was in the last game, after all. Plus, the man himself said he's not sure if the current version of the EULA is a cut-and-paste of Tekken 7's or not.

Could the software have snuck in beneath Harada's notice? I don't know. But if the game comes out in future and, somehow, does actually end up featuring Denuvo, I wouldn't be enormously surprised.

It'll be a while until we find out. Tekken 8 has no firm release date just yet, but we do apparently know about its roster thanks to a recent leak and some trailers out of EVO. But as someone whose last Tekken game was 3, all I want to know is if Heihachi will stoically toss his grandson out of a helicopter again. No throw, no buy.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.