Fans have coined the term the ‘NetherRealm Cycle’ for the phenomenon of losing interest in Mortal Kombat titles, and Mortal Kombat 1 might already be in trouble four months after release.
While all games are susceptible to losing popularity at some point, there’s something to be said when a group of fans get together to coin a nickname for it, and that’s how the ‘NetherRealm Cycle’ came to be. Following the arrival of Khameleon Kameo, Invincible’s Omni-Man and Quan Chi in Mortal Kombat 1, fans have taken to the internet to compare notes with other fans, claiming that the dreaded NetherRealm Cycle has arrived for Mortal Kombat 1. It has only been four months since MK1 launched, and only two of the Kombat Pack characters have been released, yet fans have serious issues with the current state of the game.
Many features were left on the cutting room floor when Mortal Kombat 1 was released in September 2023, including the highly requested cross-play feature that never materialized in the previous MK11 entry. MK1′s launch was plagued by a myriad of problems, including unreliable pinging – with no filter for sky-high pings – leading to inconsistent online play and constant desync issues. Fans have taken to X (formerly Twitter) to call out the title on numerous issues, including professional players such as SonicFox. Other fans on the platform have posted examples of the constant desync issues plaguing the game four months after launch.
According to SteamDB, Mortal Kombat 1‘s player count is mirroring fan backlash. Currently, the title sits with 2,264 peak concurrent active players daily on the Steam platform, whereas Street Fighter 6 — a direct fighting game competitor and a title that launched months before MK1 — has about four times that amount with 10,233 right this moment. Street Fighter 6 has been praised for its abundance of features at launch (including cross-play functionality).
With another fighting genre juggernaut, Tekken 8, scheduled to launch this week, it remains to be seen if Mortal Kombat 1 can right the ship.
