Last night, theEvo 2020game lineup was announced bringing eight modern games and one classic to the biggest fighting game tournament of the year. Just as a reminder, here are the nine games that will be on the big stage:
While there are many games that did not make the cut, there is one standout title that has surprised both the FGC (fighting game community) and the general gaming community. No, it is notSuper Smash Bros. Melee. NetherRealm Studios' 2019 releaseMortal Kombat 11did not make the cut this year for Evo 2020.
Considering how well the game has been doing in terms of sales,critical acclaim, and garnering entries for Evo last year, it seemed like a lock for Evo 2020. But as Evo co-founder Joey Cuellar was revealing the games, with the first four being the shoo-in games for the tournament, it became clearMortal Kombat 11wasn’t going to be making the cut. Initially, this was a surprise to me. Mostly because this is the fighting game I’ve followed the most since its release. In my eyes, this community seemed rather active with a presence at every major fighting game tournament. But isMortal Kombat 11’s absence really a surprise?
To begin, let’s look at the numbersMortal Kombat 11brought in at Evo 2019. Last year, Cuellar posted the final entrant numbers for each game. There were a total of 14,321 entrants split between nine games.Super Smash Bros. Ultimatehad the largest pool garnering 3,492 entrants, whileBlazBlue: Cross Tag Battlehad the smallest pool, with 640 entrants.Mortal Kombat 11had a total of 1,567 entrants, which was roughly 10% of all entrants at Evo 2019.
Assuming bringing in entrants for the event is important for Evo since it makes money from players registering, I do not believeMortal Kombat 11was cut because it wasn’t bringing in enough people to the actual event. If that were the case,Soul Calibur VIwould have been cut as it only brought in 742 players. Outside of Evo,Mortal Kombat 11has brought in plenty of entrants to the events that showcase it. It had the second-largest pool with 531 entrants atCEO 2019and the larget pool atCombo Breakerwith 758 entrants.
Since it seems likeMortal Kombat 11was bringing in people physically to the venue, maybe it wasn’t bringing in enough people to its Twitch stream. Using TwitchTracker.com for the metrics, it seems like the NRS fighter did pretty well. It wasn’t the best out of the bunch, but it certainly was not the worst. At Evo 2019,Mortal Kombat 11had an average of 51,719 viewers with its peak being 74,987 viewers during its slot onAugust 3, 2019. There were a total of 466k viewers that popped in during the tournament, with the Evo Twitch channel garnering 3.7K followers during its 4.6-hour duration.
Dragon Ball FighterZwas the other big game that day and actually had an earlier slot. It had over 60k viewers on average, with over 96k viewers at its peak during the Sonic Fox and Go1 final. It did have a lower viewership with 222k viewers in total but garnered more followers for the channel. Depending on one what determines “success” either one of the two could be considered good draws for the tournament.
Even though those aren’t bad numbers,Mortal Kombat 11certainly did not keep up withSunday’s competition.Tekken 7andSuper Smash Bros. Ultimatebrought in the most viewers and followers overall. But itdid do better(in regards to these stats) thanSamurai Shodown,UNIST(Under Night In-Birth) andSoul Calibur IV, all of which are present at Evo 2020. So, it couldn’t be thatMortal Kombat 11doesn’t draw in an online audience.
I did want to seehow wellMortal Kombat 11has done on Twitch in generalsince it launched last year. It does take a substantial dip between April 2019 (launch month) and July 2019. Since then it has been pretty steady, albeit lower on viewers.In comparison to another fighter that came out last year,Samurai Shodownseems to be maintaining its popularity among its fanbase whileMortal Kombat 11has dipped pretty substantially. Those probably aren’t the best comparisons considering how much more popularMortal Kombat 11was last year, but there is definitely a dip in interest.
But again, that is just looking at it overall. In a tournament setting, people (like myself) start to get hyped and carve out time to watch their favorite games. That being said, I don’t thinkMortal Kombat 11’s absence is a numbers issue. Clearly, there are less popular games that made it on that list.
When the news broke thatMortal Kombat 11, I started seeing a bit of a pattern in regards to how players were treated at Evo 2019 and how it isn’t really all that surprising that the game isn’t going to be there. A sort of separation between the MK players and the rest of the FGC. Here are a few tweets from some of the topMortal Kombatplayers suggesting it’s not just because of numbers.
All of these tweets refer to some sort of politics behind the scenes. They also touch on how theMortal Kombat 11community was treated while at Evo. None of them really explicitly say how they were mistreated or what sort of politics would be behind the game’s absence at Evo 2020, but it doesn’t come as a big surprise to these players.
Neither NRS or Evo have not yet commented on whyMortal Kombat 11is being left out this year. And I’m not quite sure if they will. NRS has its own plans for esports, which will probably be announced at the Final Kombat event in March. Maybe NRS wants its competition to be more online-focused like Tweedy mentioned. There could even be some sort of dispute between NRS and Evo that we don’t know about.
Regardless, Evo isn’t the only stage fighting games are played on competitively. It is almost certainMortal Kombat 11will be present at other events like Combo Breaker and CES, but I would be lying if I said I’m not a bit bewildered. Tell us why you thinkMortal Kombat 11isn’t going to be at Evo 2020 in the comments below.
