The circus hasn't left yet: players from Russia and Belarus massively downgraded Mortal Kombat 1 on Metacritic due to the lack of online play

Mortal Kombat 1 is one of the most anticipated games of autumn. The full release will take place on 19 September, but owners of the premium edition could start fierce battles as early as 14. The game has been critically acclaimed and received 85 points out of 100 on Metacritic (PlayStation 5 version). But if you look at the rating from players, it is very low - 4.5 points out of 10. What caused such discontent among gamers?

Here's What We Know

Warner Bros has blocked access to online features of Mortal Kombat 1 for people in Russia and Belarus. Russian telegram channels even wrote that if you have an account in another country, but the console is located in Russia, the functions are still unavailable. All these "smart people" ran to Metacritic to put zeros, and the most popular comments about the game were: "games are out of politics". I wonder if the Russian Atomic Heart, which is set in the Soviet Union and some of the developers' investors were companies that cooperate with the DNR, is also outside politics?

It's also worth noting that almost all large and small game publishers left the Russian and Belarusian markets in the spring of 2022. Sony did the same and even closed the PlayStation Store in these countries. Players simply found an opportunity to create accounts in other countries and buy games there, but still, it is impossible to buy new releases officially, so why don't they give absolutely all games zeroes for almost two years?

It's a pity that developers will have to deal with low scores (the Xbox Series version received 3.5 points in general) for their game not because it's bad, but because the people of two countries that attacked the neighbouring one don't know anything about this life.

When We Can Expect It

Mortal Kombat 1 will be released on September 19 on PC, PlayStation 5, Switch, and Xbox Series.