Mortal Kombat 1 players are finding themselves quite upset this week following the announcement that paid Fatalities will soon be coming to the popular fighting game. With the last few Mortal Kombat installments, NetherRealm Studios has added paid content that players can choose to purchase outside of the main game. Not only has this additional content taken the form of DLC fighters and story expansions, but an in-game storefront has also been established that gives players new cosmetic options for various characters. Now, with Mortal Kombat 1, NetherRealm is tucking exclusive Fatalities behind a paywall too, and it’s not going over well with fans.
Interesting how the history of the series skews the perception. In comparison youve got a game like For Honor that has paid cosmetic finishing moves among so many other paid cosmetics and nobody really bats an eye there, while MK gets bad press for a similar thing due to how Fatalities play into the series’ history and the precedent that was set for them in past games that were released in radically different gaming climates.
And this is not to say I support any of this, just an interesting observation.
No no no I’ll stop you right there as you don’t seem to get it: it’s shitty in either case and must be called out, it’s just that it’s more recent for MK1. You don’t get to sell a game 70€ and expect players not to complain when integral parts of it are held behind paywalls.
Yes, that’s why I said I’m not saying I support the practices, but it’s undeniable that MK is receiving more flak than other franchises who do, essentially, the same thing and it’s accepted instead, the whole reason that that’s a surprising observation is because they’re both doing the same thing and ideally should receive the same treatment.
Well, I stopped playing For Honor, because of its annoying monetization.
It definitely still affects the end consumer, it just didn’t get a bunch of bad publicity and articles for it. I still play it from time to time because I don’t know of any other games quite like it, but I do think the way they did some of the cosmetic monetized content drags the game down.
TIL about loss aversion bias and I think it fits here perfectly