Mortal Kombat 11 contains numerous advertisements for Hogwarts Legacy. A new update to Mortal Kombat 11 just came out, and it’s terrible. Hogwarts Legacy advertisements invade the home screen instead of providing fresh material or quality-of-life upgrades, even though the two properties have very little in common.
When Mortal Kombat 11 starts up, a Hogwarts Legacy trailer and a suggestion to visit its retail page are the first things you’ll notice. And that’s precisely what it will do if you’re browsing the menu as I was. Even after that, the game will continue to display a banner ad at the top of the screen, which was previously used to promote items that were at least loosely related to Mortal Kombat.
The online comments left by irate Mortal Kombat players suggest that the adverts were placed late last night. We verified it, and it was what we saw when we turned on the Xbox game.
Even if you’re one of Barry Trotter’s biggest admirers, seeing giant, skippable advertisements like this in a paid game is worrying. For context, Mortal Kombat 11 on Steam is still $49.99, while the Ultimate Edition remains $59.99. Given this, it seems unlikely that you’d be pitched another game the moment you boot up, especially one drastically different from Mortal Kombat.
The game uses the fact that both games are published by the same firm, WB Games, as support. But given that other WB-owned items haven’t been given this platform, that argument doesn’t hold up.
Not even MultiVersus, their other fighting game, presumably would have benefited from more significant publicity before being shelved. Aside from that, there are no parallels between the two games—unless, and this seems highly unlikely—this is WB’s way of revealing that Barry will be joining the cast of Mortal Kombat 12 characters.
A Gamer claims that simply attempting to skip Mortal Kombat 11’s loading screen will cause the user to accept a prompt that directs them to the Hogwarts Legacy retail website. It makes sense that someone starting up their copy of Mortal Kombat 11 would want to play Mortal Kombat 11 than buy a game that has been available for nearly three months.
It goes without saying that many fans have turned to Twitter to voice their complaints or explain their confusion regarding these odd advertisements that appeared within the game.
Mortal Kombat 11 is running a full Hogwarts Legacy ad when you log in. Wtf!? 👀 #MK11 pic.twitter.com/yzNYKSBViD
— Romel (@Digital_Method) May 5, 2023
dawg im here to play Mortal Kombat why you showing me ads for Hogwarts Legacy pic.twitter.com/29vO9dBmcF
— Kasual (@KasualZenkai) May 5, 2023
Really thrilled to launch into Mortal Kombat 11 and see a full screen video advertisement for Hogwarts Legacy.
The suits at Warner Bros. Games making these decisions should be stoned.
— Kale (@GaucheArtist) May 6, 2023
As seen in the clips, when Mortal Kombat 11 is launched, a Hogwarts Legacy video advertisement will play. By pressing the confirmation button, the player will automatically be taken to the store page; however, they must press the “cancel” button to return to the main menus.
Putting aside worries about advertising in premium games, can we please remember all the people who probably got excited when they saw a pop-up begin loading on their screens?
Fans of Mortal Kombat have been anxiously awaiting news about MK12 for several months, to the point that they are over-analyzing a single grain of sand that was noticed in a teaser marking the series’ tenth anniversary. Given this, it’s reasonable to infer that many fans anticipated the advertisement to be about Mortal Kombat 12 news rather than a sequel to a children’s book series.