The annual fighting game tournament known as EVO announced its main stage lineup of games earlier this week for 2020. The announcement is always a big moment for fans of fighting games who tune in to see which nine games will be highlighted at the EVO event. However, this year's Evolution Championship Series game announcement left longtime fans in a bit of shock due to certain expected titles not making the cut.
Naturally, major titles like Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Tekken 7, and Street Fighter V: Champion Edition are back for the 2020 tournament. The list also includes Samurai Showdown, GranBlue Fantasy Versus with EVO President Joey Cuellar confirming the return of Under Night In-Birth, Soul Calibur VI, and DragonBall FighterZ. The final spot was believed to belong to Mortal Kombat 11, though to everyone's surprise, it was decided that Marvel vs Capcom 2 would be making its grand return with a special 20th anniversary 8 player tournament.
The Mortal Kombat 11 snub has left much of the fighting game community in shock as not only did the game release last year and has sold very well, but this will be the first time that a NetherRealm Studios game won't be featured in the lineup at EVO since 2012. The developer made extensive strides to turn MK11 into more of an eSports friendly game, meaning characters were better balanced for competitive play which should have continued to make it an easy addition to EVO.
Unlike previous years, none of the organizers have yet to come out and discuss why games like Mortal Kombat 11 didn't make this year's cut. This has resulted in the community attempting to fill the knowledge gap with all sorts of theories and speculation for the omission.
Unlikely Reasons for this Mortal Kombat 11 Snub
The first place most people look towards is popularity and viewership. At last year's tournament, MK11 actually fared pretty well and actually had the highest number of entrant numbers for a NetherRealm Studios game at an EVO with 1,567 registrants. The next highest number was Mortal Kombat X back in 2016 which managed 1,162, so this fact alone has left many scratching their heads in confusion.
It is worth mentioning that NRS games do have an interesting trend which sees their registrant numbers dwindle significantly in the second year, though with the amount of post-launch support MK11 has seen since it launched last year, it's unlikely that the popularity would have declined all that much. MK11 still beat out a number of games that ultimately made this year's cut like Unist, DragonBall FighterZ, and Soul Calibur 6.
In addition, viewership on sites like Twitch remained strong at last year's event as well. According to TwitchTracker, MK11's segment pulled in an average of 51,719 viewers, which was right in the middle of the pack, not anywhere near the bottom. At its peak during the Grand Finals, MK11 managed almost 75k views on the Evo Twitch channel. All in all, this likely wasn't the reason why Mortal Kombat 11 missed this year's cut.
MK11 Community Disappointment
Some of the bigger Mortal Kombat players have voiced their opinions and sense of disappointment about the latest entry getting bounced. Major tournament players like SonicFox and Tweedy saying that politics factored into the decision.
Without a ton of details to go on, there's also been some discussion of how the MK community was viewed and treated at last year's show. Things like fans not being thrilled to be at the show, with others being mistreated by other fanbases and the like. While it's unclear if this was at all considered by the event organizers, it certainly didn't help.
Alternative Esports Plans?
With how Esports ready Mortal Kombat 11 actually is, NetherRealm isn't actually waiting around to be included at events like EVO. The developer has started hosting its own tournaments and actually just started promoting its own event called Final Kombat, and a trailer posted on January 30 showed off a number of upcoming dates for Last Chance Qualifiers with the Final Round taking place on March 8 in Chicago, Illinois. Better yet, this official tournament is also going to showcase the highly anticipated character Spawn through never before seen gameplay and interviews with voice actor Keith David and the character's creator, Todd McFarlane.
It's also no suprise that NetherRealm Studios has plans and ideas for a Pro League, so it's entirely likely that the company is more focused on doing its own thing than continuing to support Evo. Last year, WarnerMedia and eLeague teamed up for a Mortal Kombat eSports tournament which kicked off at the annual RTX event. Many members of the fighting game community are speculating that NetherRealm is going to announce its own eSports plans at the March event.
Regardless of the reasons, this is unprecedented territory for NetherRealm Studios and clearly a situation that has surprised and frustrated fans. Evo is arguably the largest fighting game tournament, so to not have representation on the main stage there is a pretty big blow. While fans may never get an explanation as to what happened, it's possible that the result of this could work out in the end if NetherRealm does decide to host its own annual eSports event instead.
Mortal Kombat 11 is out now for PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch, and Xbox One.