I can get to the main Menu and Options and that's it. Tutorial wont load, Single Match and Two Player Player vs Player crashes the game. It seems like the game is supposed to Stream/Downloaded while you play it, but I don't think it is for anyone. People are very angry on the Steam forums right now.

GOTY 10/10

shocking.

It's crazy how much people lose their shit when something isn't perfect within the first 5 seconds of it being released.

It's the first time Steam has rolled out the download as you play thing and it didn't work. Oh well. Go to bed and play it in the morning.

Pretty disappointing , hopefully they fix it soon I wanna bust some skulls.

@punched said:

People have a reasonable expectation for the thing they just paid $60 for to work "out of the box". They didn't ask for Steam to roll out a brand-new download function for their game. It's not on them to be "patient" with Steam; they paid their money and deserve to have a playable game the minute it unlocks.

I feel like they maybe could've picked a better game to stress-test streaming downloads on Steam, but that's just because I'm sitting here dying to play and waiting for a fix instead. :(

I got a really good chuckle out of going to the steam community and seeing all of the screenshots of the menu screen.

I feel dumb now thinking that this whole background download thing would work. So shocking its broken within nearly an hour of launch. stayed up till 5 in the morning for a main menu screen and the ability to pick a faction. kl im of to bed

I don't think it's unreasonable for users to expect a game to at least function in some capacity "out of the box" as it can be for a digital game. Didn't we all agree that shipping broke ass games is a trend that needed to stop after last year?

I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, but it's pretty crazy to think that the game is unplayable in its current state for what seems like every single user.

I don't understand why they don't allow you to download the full game AFTER it's out.

"As many Steam community members have noticed, the size of the initial pre-load for Mortal Kombat X is about 3 GB. This is because we are using a new feature of Steam that allows the game to be played while the full download is streamed and installed in the background."

Why? Is there a reason for this? Why the hell can't you just download the game in full before playing it? At least with a pre-download not everyone is hammering the servers at once. Doing it like this basically guarantees that within a minute of game launch you have thousands of clients requesting a download. It's not as though a big download is a massive issue for most, people seemed happy enough downloading 65GB for GTAV. If I had bought this, I would be pissed.

Edit: This will probably all be meaningless in a day or two, and people will have calmed down. But major launch issues are still major launch issues.

My PS4 digital version just errored out while I was watching the faction wars intro videos. I had to reset video and audio setting when I relaunched.

If it makes you guys feel any better the online on ps4 is fuuuuuucked at the moment. Horrible lag and takes quite awhile just to get in the menu. Probably shouldn't be playing online anyway since it just came out but still

I'm not one to cause a ruckus over technical difficulties, but because of the way this game came out... it is annoying. They pushed us to pre order the game by locking Goro behind the pre order and the game doesn't work. I know it will be good to go soon, but I would have loved to have been able to watch this happen and buy the full game tomorrow when it's fixed. It's cool that they tried a way to make sure people can get in an play while the rest downloads, but it's a bummer that it backfired.

The most gross thing is the "Now Available" banner on the Steam front page. No, no it's not because it doesnt work.

This is a disgusting travesty and an atrocity on the level of a war crime that we deserve massive compensation for or something.

But seriously, I will concede it was a little silly to try out such a feature in this manner on launch night. Maybe test it out on those downloading after the unlock, and people can still preload? I'd rather have preloading than a feature like this, if it came down to it.

Oh well, GMG doesn't have my key yet so it'll prob have to wait until after work tomorrow anyway.

Here's an uneducated guess: The release time didn't change from 12pm 4/14 to 12 hours earlier until around 8-9pm CST. The sudden 12hr jump may have left Steam's content servers unable to make the 3GB executable functional, let alone the rest of the game that was supposed to download as you play. I feel like this whole release worked aces in QA, but once someone realized they should release the game at midnight instead of noon 3 hrs before midnight and flipped the switch, shit broke hard.

Remember those times during 90s and early 2000, when you bought a game, brought it back home, unpacked from the box, installed it and played the shit out of it? You did not needed internet connection, day one patches, or any other shit. You got the game and almost played it immediately. I don't remember people being so angry about releases during those times... and now... gosh, if it does not work, then go play something else, read a book, or go to bed, because you will have to wait... have you not learned about that with our current releases? Sim City, Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2(like almost every other MMO), and many, many more.
Btw. I remember when I got my Half Life 1 and Settlers 3... it was awesome.

Are you really defending something not working that people paid $60 for? This kind of attitude is exactly why devs think they can get away with this nonsense.

No, the people paying $60 for it is the reason they get away with it.

@fobwashed: Alright, pack it up, thread's over, we're done here boys. Bravo.

It's weird that the people can talk about how broken games at launch should stop happening while simultaneously ridiculing people who get upset when the game they bought doesn't work at launch.

So, the latest lesson in not preordering games then? I wish this worked for you guys, I really do, but I have to say that if you play with fire you're going to get burned.

@mb: Yo, I don't mean this in any disrespectful way but that statement is pretty dumb. I preordered the game two days ago because I knew I was going to buy it on release day and wanted to preload it since I work 2nd shift and get out at 12 AM. Saying people should learn a lesson from this when it works 99% of the time on Steam probably is the wrong way to go about it.

EDIT: It's not even the problem with it when the issue is the streaming system that Valve chose to implement with this game.

@shotgunlincoln: How is it dumb? You're blind purchasing a completely unknown and untested product after a long history of seeing big games not work for awhile after release, or have other major problems. If you're going to preorder games, then you are always taking a risk. If you think that risk is worth whatever benefits you think you're getting from preordering, in this case Goro or preloading or whatever, then more power to you I guess.

And this wasn't Valve's choice to use the new streaming download option. It was NetherRealm/High Voltage.

@punched: I contentedly agree and disagree with this statement. If I pay 60 USD for a new title, I expect it to have some form of functionality upon release. I also purchased GTA V PC tonight and--while not perfect in terms of performance and the quirky bug with Windows Usernames--it works to a justifiable degree with the hope of improvements on the horizon. MK X is just busted in the most teasing of ways. I would almost wager that we hear something from NR studios about an accidental midnight launch of the PC version or some such damage control. Here's hope we get some free skins/DLC for this fiasco.

But, on the other hand, if you really spend all day counting down the hours until the midnight release of any game---you might need something better to do with your time. I will head to bed this morning (night shifter here) and check it out tomorrow afternoon. No big deal.

@fobwashed: Bravo. I love the @gvaranini comment.

@mb: It's dumb because it implies that the people who preorder games bear some of the fault for them not working.

Yah I agree with this fully. Internet hyperbole completely aside, people shouldn't have to be patient with games. No one is patient with you when it comes to paying for the game. It's not like you can play it and the publisher has to be patient with you to get around to sending them the money when you have a free moment.

Games should absolutely work out of the box no question asked. I'm not a video game activist in the slightest but when we as consumers start giving up on this and buy into the whole "well thats the reality of todays development, servers are unpredictable, things happen.." then we're REALLY screwing ourselves over in the long run.

It's fallacious to think people should wait or even not complain about something going wrong with a new release. It's not even about money either, it's a flaw of the designer/production/distributor/etc not the fault of the consumer. This is entirely counter to how human beings work and is nothing more than ignorance or a troll post at worst.

@shotgunlincoln: It's the developers and publishers fault that their games don't work, but people who pre-order the games are enabling them to get away with it because they already have your money. They're betting that you either can't or wont bother trying to get your money back on digital titles because it's such a hassle.

Having said that, if your game isn't going to work on release day, don't release it until it works. I'll happily trade off another month of QA testing instead of getting games that are busted up. I wish all developers and publishers would just come out and say this, agree to it. Yes games take a long time to make now, they're very complex, so in the interest of making a game that works it'll take this many months to get it into a state it can release in and be functionally playable. Also maybe stop announcing games so far ahead of them being ready for launch. Save that marketing money for debugging.

If you're going to try something new, like playing while downloading (something Blizzard figured out), test that shit before you release it. And properly test it.

@jesus_phish: See that's where the argument doesn't make sense to me. Developers and Publishers get away with it no matter what. The only way to stop it from happening is if no one bought their game whatsoever and that will never ever happen. I'm betting the amount of copies that a broken game continues to sell past release date exceeds the amount that was preordered.

I wonder if Stream opted for the 3gb download to make way for the GTA V ruckus?

@shotgunlincoln: They get away with it because people keep pre-ordering their games. It's absolutely the devs and publishers who are to blame that their game that they worked on is busted it. But they know they can get away with it because they've already sold a tonne of copies on pre-orders.

You don't have to not buy their games. You just have to say "I'm not buying this until I know it works". And if that takes a week or two weeks, then you do that. If everyone did that publishers would shit the bed and panic and start realizing, we can't keep getting away with this. Why people can't control themselves enough to do this is beyond me. I'd really like to play GTA V, but I'm not buying that until I have enough sources (press/youtubers/video evidence) that it works properly. I thought Titan Souls looked great but after reading about it now I'm not sold on it any more.

Games get fixed post launch because devs/pubs know they can do that. Drew has mentioned it several times when talking about his testing days of "known: shippable" meaning they know they're selling you a busted product and they'll get around to it later. They know that people are going to buy their games, going to give them money upfront for both the game and even content that doesn't exist yet (season passes) in some show of good faith because consumers have shown to have no self control over it. Some people have spent close to $100 on MK X and it's busted. Like @humanity mentioned, there's no reverse of this. There's no way for you to delay your payment to developers while playing the game.

But you can delay your payment by not buying it until you know it's done, that it's working and by not pre-ordering. In addition to that, if everyone stopped pre-ordering, you wouldn't have Goro behind a wall like that. Remember when pre-ordering started as just "you get this skin from gamestop and that skin from walmart". Now it's characters and story missions, only you can't play those because your game doesn't work.

game's borked. Just glad it wasn't just me. People saying it's the release time got jacked up which is why the patches aren't downloading. Bit of a bummer, but glad I picked up premium edition for the price of the regular. That'll probably be worth 60 bucks tomorrow when I can play it! Maybe this is some subversive way of messing with the Tyranny of Tuesday releases?

To be fair, we don't know if this is the fault of High Voltage (company hired to port the game for Netherrealm) or Valve. People who are saying it's the developer who botched this may or may not be correct. What's shocking is that nobody has gotten out ahead of this to tell the people what's going on and stem the shitstorm of negativity which could hurt the game for it's lifetime. Not NRS, Not High Voltage, Not WB, and not Steam. Why not let people know what's happening?

@s10129107: Becouse its only raging in enthusiastforums and if they went out with something official it would become common knwoledge that the game launched broken.

As someone taking vacation time to play some MK I don't think it is unreasonable to expect the download to be live when the game is out. I cannot even begin getting the other 27gb of data. So I have a long download still ahead of me.

@fobwashed: thank you.

Note the language NetherRealm/WB used here..."...we are using a new feature of Steam..."

*Update* the packs in the pre-load message have begun downloading.

@mb said:

@caesius6 said:

@kishinfoulux said:

@punched said:

It's crazy how much people lose their shit when something isn't perfect within the first 5 seconds of it being released.

It's the first time Steam has rolled out the download as you play thing and it didn't work. Oh well. Go to bed and play it in the morning.

Are you really defending something not working that people paid $60 for? This kind of attitude is exactly why devs think they can get away with this nonsense.

I don't have the game, but it seems like problem is with Steam and Valve trying out a new feature, not with MKX. Doesn't seem right to blame it on the developers.

Any reports of this happening last night if the game was acquired via another service?

Note the language NetherRealm/WB used here..."...we are using a new feature of Steam..."

The guy who released that message works for Valve not NRS.

Whatever man, no Smoke no Sale

And here I though the port of Dead or Alive 5: Last Round sucked. It was 3(ish?) months late, uses the last gen version's graphics, has no online play, doesn't let you rebind keys, and doesn't work with many controllers (some XInput vs DirectInput thing apparently), but at least it runs... usually.

PS: Goddammit, @fobwashed.

@conker: I'm not 100% but i think smoke is a secret character.

What nonsense? Stuff breaks. It happens.

I hold them accountable to fix what breaks in a timely matter and they did. If this had started to drag out then I can see people getting angry. I paid my $60 and I'm playing the game the day it was released and it works just fine.

@s10129107:

Dude what? Gary Lake-Schaal works for WB Games.

Hopefully a fix is on its way soon and this doesn't kill the pc community for this game. I'm assuming since this game is borked even on the main menu that nobody has had a chance to check out the netcode for this one?

On a side note how much is GTA V coming out also playing a factor into all this? I remember during the livestream the staff were talking about steam being super slow for them cause GTA V preload release.