Mortal Kombat X was’t very good on the PC. While not the outright disaster that Batman: Arkham Knight was, it was still plagued with technical problems. A community still formed around the fighting sequel, but Warner Bros. and NetherRealm are cutting ties with PC players; there will be no more DLC for it.
The PC version was not developed at NetherRealm — it was outsourced to High Voltage Software.
When Mortal Kombat XL was announced earlier this week, bundling the DLC with the original game, it only referenced the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This was important because there’s another DLC pack coming soon: Kombat Pack 2.
Kombat Pack 2 isn’t a costume pack, it’s four new characters: Tri-Borg, Bo’ Rai Cho, the creature from Alien and Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Understandably, fans started asking questions, prompting a NetherRealm community manager to post a statement on a popular Mortal Kombat forum:
No further clarification has come from Warner Bros. or NetherRealm, and series co-creator Ed Boon hasn’t said anything on Twitter.
“We don’t have any additional comment,” said a Warner Bros. spokesperson.
The silence suggests support for the PC version of Mortal Kombat X is over, though hopefully the outcry from fans can rally them to invest in the final DLC.
There was previous evidence that PC was becoming an afterthought. NetherRealm is currently developing a revamped netcode for online multiplayer, but the beta has only been discussed for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 — not PC.
No doubt, the PC community is smaller than what exists on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but getting the same DLC as the other platforms isn’t a big ask. Warner Bros. hasn’t treated the PC well lately, and this won’t help matters.
Comments
20 responses to “Mortal Kombat X’s PC Players Are Getting The Shaft”
With the exception of MKX’s early adoption of Steams Streaming install option, that downloads the game while you play, i never had any issues whatsoever with MKX on PC…. sure it was annoying, but it was 3-4 days of heartache and then all was good.
If the sales numbers aren’t there on the PC I don’t see why they would bother to create/port the DLC for the system.
I have no evidence to back this up but it seems the PC community isn’t the most comfortable system to be playing fighting games on. Generally, the controls are mapped for fighting sticks, then controllers and using a keyboard isn’t as comfortable. Double this with a lot of PC owners also owning at least 1 current gen console where they could buy the game and you’ve got a recipe for lackluster sales.
steam numbers are somewhere in the realm of 500-600k apparently.
don’t have a source for that number. but it’s the one being cited most frequently.
Not sure if you know this, but believe it or not there are controllers and fighting sticks available for PC.
The Console ones usually work perfectly on PC. Steering wheels especially are now being sold as XB1 & PC or PST & PC. I know we aren’t talking about Wheels here, but it is an example of a specialty controller working on Console and PC.
To be fair I think @zac may have meant that the on the big screen on the lounge is how many prefer to play their fighting games. Consoles already come with Controllers so you don’t need to adapt a control system or purchase a new one. Also to be fair to the other side of the argument, anybody buying fighting games on a PC has a Controller for fighting games and could very well be sending the game to the TV in the first place.
Of course there most definitely are. There are also people who don’t buy those peripherals but enjoy fighting games. 100% of console users have a controller that can be considered comfortable, the PC defaults as keyboard and mouse which is not as comfortable. So as I said, if someone owns a current gen console they may be likely to buy it there and not on PC
Poor sales are never an excuse to provide a shit service. Every time a company does this they should be rightfully raked over the coals.
Poor sales are a reason not to put more money into a product than you are going to get back.
e.g. Low userbase, don’t invest money into porting DLC when you are unlikely to make that back in sales
Oh yeah. I’m not gonna dismiss the business sense, I’m just not excusing it.
Between the state of this release, Arkham Knight and Arkham Origins, I’m done with WB across all platforms. They clearly don’t give a toss about QC.
Shadows of mordor i thought had a very well done pc port. It’s sad that wb won’t put the effort into a decent PC port.
even dying light and mad max were decent, because they weren’t out sourced to other developers with little or no PC experience
Even with the excellent Mordor, the publisher got in their own way with the whole, secretive paid YouTuber reviews fuckup.
Which was just mind-boggling because they didn’t HAVE TO DO THAT. It was a great game, people would’ve raved about it anyway.
Going to have to ask you for a bit more on THAT.
Oh, there was this bit of scandal where YouTubers (‘Tastemakers’) were being approached by WB marketing in advance of the Mordor launch, asking them to review the game and publish favourable reviews ahead of the embargo, for pay. But it was considered shady and under-the-table, because it wasn’t being disclosed that these were paid reviews.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/10/the-messy-story-behind-youtubers-taking-money-for-game-coverage/
Adding insult to injuyr, they had a whole contract one what they were or weren’t allowed to say or show. (In short: Nothing negative. At all.)
Pretty deceptive – manipulative at best – and completely unnecessary, because the game was good enough that they didn’t have to buy favourable reviews. So WB marketing were a bunch of deceptive fuckholes because… I don’t know, they’re the scorpions in the scorpion+turtle story? They had no faith in their developers?
One of the potential reviewers put it best, I think:
Mordor on 360/ps3 though was pretty trashy.
This isn’t really surprising. Typically when you’ve already said, “Go fuck yourselves,” there’s not really much additional comment you need to make.
Not unless you want to clarify about the horse they rode in on, no.
2016 outrage: DLC for a game isn’t coming to a specific platform.
If they choose to ignore the PC fanbase then do the same back and stop supporting them. All of their PC releases lately have been a joke, don’t expect anything less from them in that department at this stage.
This is not a new thing mate. There’s been quite a few cases of multi-platform games having their DLC withheld for some.
And in the case of DLC you can’t just “stop supporting them” because you can’t do so retroactively: customers have already bought the game that the DLC is for! They literally cannot send the message that they refuse to support these businesses by not buying DLC that doesn’t exist! At no point are customers informed when they buy that their platform will be excluded – it always comes too late.
There needs to be outrage (or some such) because rest assured, WB is quite happy with what they’ve done.
I hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for WB PC games…