Is Mortal Kombat 1’s future already over? (Warner Bros.)

The next two DLC fighters aren’t even out yet and there’s chatter of Mortal Kombat 1 wrapping up its post-launch support early.

Compared to its contemporaries, things don’t seem to be looking good for Mortal Kombat 1. The likes of Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive still have DLC characters on the way, Tekken 8 fans are expecting a new character reveal at The Game Awards, and even King Of Fighters 15 is confirmed to be getting two new characters next week.

Admittedly, Mortal Kombat 1 also has two more DLC fighters scheduled, with guest stars Conan the Barbarian and the T-1000 from Terminator 2. Both lack release dates but, at this rate, they’ll likely arrive in 2025.

However, a popular rumour alleges that these characters will mark a shockingly quick end to Mortal Kombat 1’s post-launch support, less than two years afters its September 2023 release.

This rumour gained traction a week ago courtesy of FateUnknown, a trusted Mortal Kombat leaker. According to them, there were plans for a third pack of DLC characters and another story expansion, but they’ve recently been cancelled.

This has since been corroborated by Mortal Kombat dataminer thethiny, who claims to have been told by two other insiders that the third character pack has been canned, with no more DLC planned after the T-1000.

While not a leaker themselves, thethiny is also considered a reputable source among Mortal Kombat fans, as they did accurately leak details about the Khaos Reigns story expansion and the addition of animalities.

However, thethiny notes that none of the leakers seem to agree on what the characters would have been in the third DLC pack. This could be due to plans changing at developer NetherRealm Studios or these insiders being given deliberately wrong info to obfuscate the studio’s actual plans, although some fans are hoping this means the cancellation claims are actually false.

Fan opinion of the Khaos Reigns story expansion doesn’t appear to be very high (Warner Bros.)

As for why any DLC would be cancelled to begin with, it’s suggested it’s in part due to the poor sales of the Khaos Reigns expansion, on top of disappointing sales of the main game.

Mortal Kombat 1 has sold four million units so far but while that seems good on the face of it, new Mortal Kombat games often make the top 10 best-selling titles in the US on their year of release (it’s proportionally much less popular in the rest of the world) but that wasn’t the case this time round.

For example, Mortal Kombat 11, was the fifth best-selling game of 2019 in the US with a lifetime total of over 15 million copies sold.

It’s not entirely clear why there would be such a sudden drop-off in interest, but it seems the game’s reboot of its long-running storyline, and new backstories for most characters, did not go down well with fans.

Ghostface was only added to the game a couple of weeks ago (Warner Bros.)

Fans have also complained about the game’s monetisation (though Mortal Kombat 11 was also flooded with microtransactions), a general disinterest in the story, and the lack of any brand new characters or features.

The only genuinely new gameplay mechanic (if you don’t count the various other fighter games that have done something similar before) is the Kameo system, where you can call in assist characters to help you, but it’s easy to find fan discussions on Reddit that show how unpopular it proved to be.

At the time of writing, neither Warner Bros. nor NetherRealm have commented on the rumours. Although, when a fan brought them up with creative director Ed Boon, by asking for more DLC, he only responded with, ‘I appreciate the kind words.’

As for what could happen next, NetherRealm may shift attention to its DC fighting game series, Injustice. Everyone expected an Injustice 3 would have come after Mortal Kombat 11, since NetherRealm usally flips back and forth between the two series.

However, Boon admitted last year that there were multiple factors that prompted the studio to break tradition and stick with Mortal Kombat, including needing to acclimatise to a new game engine and the poor timing of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to a recent comment from Warner Bros. though, Mortal Kombat is one of its ‘four strong and profitable game franchises’ alongside Harry Potter, Game Of Thrones, and DC Comics. Which at the very least means that there should be more games in the future, although it won’t be a surprise if they ditch Mortal Kombat 1’s storyline.

After Omni-Man and Homelander, maybe it’s time for the real Superman to step forward (Warner Bros.)

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