Mortal Kombat 1 players were none too happy to hear that paid Fatalities would be added to the game, and now that the first of those is out with the release of the Halloween Fatality, players are unsurprisingly even less enthused. The Fatality itself is alright, the community has suggested, and features a Halloween-themed death animation where a putrid Jack-o-Lantern is slammed on someone’s head before being kicked right off, but the price tag attached to the Fatality is what’s going over so poorly. It’s gotten to the point that people are calling for others to boycott the Fatality entirely so as to prevent things like this from being added in the future.
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If you haven’t seen the Fatality yet, you can catch a video of it below to see what it looks like in action. For some background, it’s a universal Fatality which means that it can be used with any character in the game if you’ve got 1,200 Dragon Krystals to spare. Given that you can buy Krystals in the in-game shop and get a pack of 1,250 for $9.99, that essentially makes this a $10 Fatality.
Mortal Kombat 1’s Halloween Fatality
Twitter user Eddie_Fresh was one of several who showed off the Fatality in-game. It’s gruesome, sure, which is exactly what people would expect from Fatalities in Mortal Kombat 1. But many Fatalities are better in terms of the gore factor or are more cinematic, and those can be acquired without shelling out $10. One could technically acquire enough Krystals to buy this item through saving up the Krystals, but the limited, seasonal nature of this may tempt players to pull the trigger on a purchase if they don’t have enough saved up.
Maximilian Dood, a well-known streamer in the fighting game community, called out the Mortal Kombat 1 add-on this week in one of his recent streams. He recalled buying the Deadly Alliance skin for Scorpion because it was “really cool” despite him feeling like he was being gouged on the price, but the same can’t be said for the Halloween Fatality.
“I’m not buying this new thing though,” he said in a stream. “I ain’t buying this new thing. This one’s pretty egregious, man.”
He continued soon after in the stream to further explain his anti-Happy Halloween Fatality stance by saying the price on that and other cosmetics were akin to the prices players would see on items sold in free-to-play games. Fortnite and Apex Legends, for example, can somewhat get away with charging $10 or $15 for premium skins, but those are free-to-play games, not something someone already spent $60 or $70 on.
Other Mortal Kombat 1 players in the community have shared similar responses protesting the skin and urging others not to buy it. Some of the more heated posts within the Mortal Kombat subreddit are even getting removed because they’re focusing so directly on NetherRealm Studios and its decision to add this to the game.
This certainly feels like something that NetherRealm or Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon will respond to in some way or another in the future given that this is only the first week that the Fatality has been out, though that remains to be seen.
