Tekken 8 Newcomers May Have Leaked Months Ago

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The highly anticipated 8th installment of the Tekken series, Tekken 8, which still has an undisclosed release window, has recently suffered a swarm of leaks regarding its character roster, and it would appear as though some of the game's newcomers have been revealed ahead of time. Let's take this one step at a time.

It's being claimed that Bandai Namco Europe, via its official website, leaked the announcements for two characters that will be playable in Tekken 8, before they were officially revealed. As seen in this screenshot, the website shows two posts for new character announcements, one for veteran Raven, and one for what appears to be a newcomer called Azucena.

Another supposed leak was the image seen below which allegedly portrays the finalized character roster. The 4th character on the top row shows a character with a lily-like flower on her head. Azucena translated to Spanish is Lily, so many fans believe the two leaks are true and that they are aligned.

Is this #Tekken8 roster leak real ? 🧐 pic.twitter.com/lnknkF8ulL
— Fightstick Art アーケードファイトスティック (@fightstickart) August 4, 2023

Finally, a user on Reddit posted a screenshot of a 4chan post from April, which claimed that the game will have "3 newcomers in total," one of them called Azucena, "a Peruvian mixed martial artist." The other two characters the post mentioned were Victor, a French UN agent/spy, and Reina, "Heichachi's secret daughter."

With all that being said, all of this could be an elaborate scam. It's getting remarkably easy these days to have a fake leak pick up steam, such as what occurred with the recent Lego Harry Potter "leak" (later disproven by SkippingTheCutscene). However, what lends these leaks the most credibility is that the Bandai Namco Europe error does appear to be real.

Other users, such as this individual on Twitter, posted their own screenshot of the website that showed the alleged headlines. And if that leak is real, then that lends credence to the 4chan post being real as well, as Azucena is a pretty specific name. The alleged roster image, however, is still a coin flip. If all of it ends up being a fake leak, then it's undoubtedly quite a detailed and coordinated one.