Tekken 8 Players Are Getting Crushed By A Bot Mashing One Move

The Tekken 8 community is having its mind completely blown right now, as a bot is rampaging its way up the online leaderboards. It isn’t employing actual combos or traditional fighting-game skill, though. Instead, thanks to a few lines of code, the bot is merely button-mashing a single move, and players who run into it don’t exactly know what to do or how to deal. It’s hilarious.

On April 27, redditor kjempe_humor created a bot using Eddy Gordo, the capoeira king who was added to Tekken 8 earlier this month alongside the controversial battle pass. With “exactly 21 lines of Python,” as they explained to another redditor, kjempe_humor’s Eddy has been tearing up the fighting game’s Ranked ladder, a leaderboard where online players get very, very sweaty about their competitiveness. Which makes it all the more exasperating that kjempe_humor’s Eddy has been programmed to spam just one move: the character’s left kick, which corresponds to the third button on a fighting gamepad. With a Twitch channel connected to the bot, titled Jimmashima (it’s a pretty good name, not gonna lie), kjempe_humor’s Eddy has been making a name for itself, with the community colloquially dubbing it “3ddy” because of the repeated pressing of the left kick. At the time of writing, 3ddy has ridden that one move all the way to the title of “Vanquisher,” the 13th rank out of Tekken 8‘s 30 total.

In the comments of their Reddit post, kjempe_humor briefly explained how the bot works. While Python, a programming language often used to automate tasks and conduct data analysis, is the backbone of 3ddy, kjempe_humor said that no one maintains or monitors the bot. “I just leave for work and hope for the best,” kjempe_humor told another redditor. Kjempe_humor’s also been surprised by 3ddy’s performance, telling yet another redditor that “[it’s] doing way better than I expected.”

And honestly, that’s facts. I’ve been watching 3ddy all morning on Twitch. I figured that a bot spamming just a single move would be easy to deal with, but I was wrong. At least five different players, some of whom were ranked way higher than 3ddy, rage-quit the match. Others tried their best using proper fighting game mechanics, but wound up getting their asses whooped anyway. A few did exactly what 3ddy did, button-mashing just one move to get the W. But most fail to find an effective strategy against 3ddy, and it’s hilarious to watch so many opponents get bodied by the bot’s relentless onslaught. 3ddy isn’t even that hard. In fact, like some training settings in Tekken 8, fighting 3ddy is akin to learning how to block moves and handle pressure, and plenty of opponents who learn his (very simple) pattern and exploit his recovery animations do emerge victorious. Quitting instead of adapting, as redditor Leon3226 said about 3ddy, “tells much more about Ranked players’ attitude than about Eddy.” I couldn’t agree more.

Kotaku has reached out to kjempe_humor for comment.

Funnily enough, the Twitch chat is torn on 3ddy. I’ve seen a lot of positive comments about the bot, with folks spamming “P3RF3CT” whenever it gets a victory untouched and saying they’re going to use this as a guide to learn Eddy Gordo for real. Others, though, blow the chat up with “Booooo” and send copypastas about how 3ddy will discourage children from playing Tekken 8 when they lose to the spamming bot. Whatever the consensus is, I’m going to be laughing the entire time. This is gold.