The developer of Mortal Kombat, NetherRealm, has announced the shutdown of one of its well-known mobile games and experienced a large round of layoffs.
ResetEra users noticed that NetherRealm developers announced their layoffs on LinkedIn, saying that the corporation appears to be dismantling its mobile staff.
According to an impacted employee, NetherRealm’s mobile team as a whole was shut down. This group provided live services for several games, including Mortal Kombat Onslaught, Injustice 2, and Mobile.
Just one year after its release, in October 2024, Mortal Kombat: Onslaught’s X/Twitter page revealed that the game would be discontinued. The statement said, “It has been a pleasure to create this game for our Community, and we appreciate the enthusiasm from our fans.” “We will reveal the precise time of the game’s end in the upcoming weeks.”
Neither the Mortal Kombat Mobile nor the Injustice 2 Mobile X/Twitter pages had a shutdown notice as of the time this article was published. Updates have been released for both titles; in fact, the layoffs happened the day after a big update for Mortal Kombat Mobile featured the guest character Spawn. In Mortal Kombat Mobile’s summer update, Spawn is supposed to be the first of three new characters to arrive. Onslaught Jax and MK1 Kenshi will follow.
NetherRealm announced layoffs just before revealing plans for DLC characters and improvements for Mortal Kombat 1 at a San Diego Comic-Con panel. Ed Boon, the head of NetherRealm development, has not yet tweeted about the game closure or the layoffs.
The NetherRealm layoffs occur during one of the worst times in the video gaming industry’s history. Over the past two years, thousands of people have lost their employment due to publisher and developer struggles in a more challenging market. In addition to Sony’s 900 layoffs and Microsoft’s 1,900 job loss from its gaming division this year, numerous other major publishers have also made layoffs.
