Highlights

  • Recent data suggests that Mortal Kombat 1 on PC has fewer players compared to Mortal Kombat 11, possibly due to issues like visual bugs, glitches, and controversial microtransactions.
  • Despite Mortal Kombat 1 receiving critical acclaim, its player base is slightly dwindling, with players going back to the previous entry.
  • Data from SteamDB and SteamCharts shows that Mortal Kombat 11 has more overall players and higher peak concurrent players than Mortal Kombat 1 on PC.

Recent data suggests that there are fewer players of the recently released Mortal Kombat 1 on PC than of the previous entry, Mortal Kombat 11. The perception of Mortal Kombat 1 has been seeing a slight dip, where despite the critical acclaim it received, its playerbase has been running into several issues. These include visual bugs, gameplay glitches, and even controversial microtransactions that Mortal Kombat 1 has implemented. This has apparently resulted in a slightly dwindling player base, if recent data is to be believed, with players going back to the previous entry.

Mortal Kombat 11 was originally released in 2019, being billed as the final game that took place in Mortal Kombat's original timeline. The events of the game would see Liu Kang eventually overcoming the odds, ascending to godhood, and eventually setting up the rebooted timeline seen in Mortal Kombat 1. Despite being released nearly five years ago, it still has a rather active player base. So much so that it is apparently overtaking Mortal Kombat 1 in terms of recent player counts.

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According to data from SteamDB and SteamCharts for Mortal Kombat 1 and Mortal Kombat 11, the latter game has had more overall players within a week. Based on an MK1 analysis from SteamCharts, one of the last peaks in 24 hours for the game as of this writing was 6820 players, while MK11 had 10,112 players within the same time frame. The peak concurrent players, according to SteamCharts, seems to put MK11 over MK1 as well. It seems fans are currently preferring the previous game over the most recently released entry on this specific platform.

Mortal Kombat 1 vs. Mortal Kombat 11 Player Counts

MK11 Steam Charts
Mortal Kombat 11 Player Count (via SteamCharts as of October 29, 2023)
MK1 SteamCharts
Mortal Kombat 1 Player Count (via SteamCharts as of October 29, 2023)
MK1 SteamDB
Mortal Kombat 1 Player Count (via SteamDB as of October 29, 2023)
MK11 SteamDB
Mortal Kombat 11 Player Count (via SteamDB as of October 29, 2023)

This data is mostly supported by another website, SteamDB, which compares the number of players on MK1 versus MK11's player count on Steam as well. While MK1's all-time peak seems to be higher around its launch (38,129 players compared to MK11's 35,147 players), the eleventh mainline game still has a higher amount of recent peak players. Despite Mortal Kombat 1 being reviewed better than previous entries, the issues that it has run into likely have caused people to drop the game for the older ones.

These numbers only account for the PC version of these Mortal Kombat games on Steam, however, not counting the amount of console players that have played the game. These numbers can change as time goes on, as there is more content planned to be added to Mortal Kombat 1, like DLC characters as well as bug fixes. For the time being, Mortal Kombat 1's reception seems to be struggling when compared to past games.