A Chinese Tekken 8 player was recently disqualified from this year’s Tekken World Tour tournament following a promising start. Tekken 8 publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment has organized the annual Tekken World Tour since 2017 as a global showcase of the best Tekken players. These players are monitored throughout the season, and those who score enough points on the online leaderboards earn the chance to compete in the Tekken World Tour Finals and win a massive cash prize.
This year’s Tekken World Tour will be the first one centered around Tekken 8, which launched to rave reviews back in January. The last event to be held as part of Tekken World Tour 2024 before the upcoming Finals on December 5 was Thaiger Uppercut 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand. There, a young Chinese player by the handle of Essence|XCC surprised many by rising to the 9th place ranking, defeating several notable competitors in the process.
Unfortunately, this is as far as Essence|XCC will go in the Tekken World Tour 2024 tournament, as they were eventually double-disqualified at Thaiger Uppercut 2024. According to Eventhubs, the official reason for XCC’s disqualification was that they hailed from China, which isn’t included on the official list of territories from which Tekken World Tour players are allowed to compete. As per the official Tekken World Tour 2024 rules, players can only participate if they are from North America, Central America, South America, West Europe, East Europe, West Africa, South Africa, North and East Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, Central & South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, Korea, and Japan.
Before the official reason for Essence|XCC’s disqualification was made public, many outside observers were confused by the news, including Tekken 8 director Katsuhiro Harada. In a now-deleted Twitter post, Harada said that he would look into what happened, and that neither he nor Tekken 8 game designer Michael Murray are involved with the rules and regulations of the Tekken World Tour.
Meanwhile, Team Essence, the eSports group that had sponsored XCC, maintained their support for the young player and expressed disappointment at their disqualification. It appears that Team Essence wasn’t aware of the rules forbidding Chinese players from participating in the Tekken World Tour event, even as they called the disqualification itself “villainous.”
It isn’t clear how XCC was able to enter the Tekken World Tour 2024 tournament in the first place, and it should be noted that several other players from prohibited regions like China and Russia were reportedly eliminated before this disqualification. For XCC’s part, they seem to be taking this recent disappointment in stride, thanking fans for their support and saying that they will continue to hone their Tekken 8 skills despite being disqualified from the latest Tekken World Tour event.
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