Poll results: Should Mortal Kombat 1 include a toggle option to turn off blood and gore?

Update: Voting has come to an end on our polls, so you can check out the final results for whether the community would like to see and would potentially use a violence toggle in Mortal Kombat below.

For over 30 years now, Mortal Kombat has reveled in the blood, guts and death that only this series can provide although not everyone wants to see all of that all the time.

The discussion surrounding the next-level violence in Mortal Kombat 1 has been going on since it was first announced, but has recently stepped up over discourse about whether the game should feature a toggle option to tone down the gore.

Pro player and former Evo champion Rewind recently threw his hat in the ring that really seems to have jumpstarted the talks again about wishing NetherRealm Studios would include such an option to potentially benefit the eSports scene for MK1.

We'd like to discuss that further while also going beyond the potential benefits for just tournaments.

The obvious counter argument to all of this is to simply say that the blood and violence has been a part of Mortal Kombat's DNA from the very beginning, and that's technically not wrong.

To remove the one thing that put MK on the map to appease the esports scene is… not it I’m sorry https://t.co/qKW8qG3ZGV

What that argument fails to recognize, however, is that since the very first console releases up through Mortal Kombat 2011's no blood code, the developers did give the option varying degrees of options to tone down the violence on screen.

Although modern Mortal Kombat are never really hurting in terms of sales and are in fact among the highest sellers out there, bringing something similar back for MK1 could open the door to an even wider audience.

Whether that be people with children, younger people, or even just players who don't want to see all of that on their screen all the time, there are people who are interested in the characters, story and gameplay who wish they could avoid the gore.

Some of the responses to this are insanely weird.Yes the violence is a part of MK's identity, but it's also what holds it back from wider distribution and opportunities.Man is proposing a simple toggle switch so you can have your cake and eat it too. Do you not like cake!? 🍰 https://t.co/kdU5TZ2qGH

This is just a personal anecdote, but my introduction to the series was a friend bringing his copy over as a young teen (I don't remember which exactly), but my mom knowing what Mortal Kombat is, would only allow us to play it in the house if we turned the blood off (or turned it green), especially with my younger siblings around.

If it wasn't for that, I probably would have never experienced the series until MK9 just as I was finishing up high school.

Moreover, there's countries and regions of the world where Mortal Kombat games are never officially available like Japan, and perhaps setting up the toggle to be default on in those areas would be enough to get the games on shelves there.

The whole eSports scene would probably benefit from the option as well with more advertisers likely being more willing to take part in events although maybe not quite as much as Rewind thinks because of how much their backing relies on Warner Bros. and NRS anyways.

The group of people it would probably benefit the most though is content creators and streamers since we've seen time and time again videos get demonitized and age restricted for basically having anything to do with Mortal Kombat.

Most have been forced to jump through extra hoops like cutting away from certain footage, changing the video feed to black and white or just constantly beating up on Reptile for his green blood just so they can make any money out of their content.

This proposed less violent option would also help expand the reach and audience of those who want to sit down and watch MK content and grow the community more through that avenue as well.

Although I personally believe a violence toggle option would be a net positive for MK1, I just don't really see that happening at this point or in any future update.

To do this, the developers would have needed to take that into account from basically the very beginning, but they're of course leaning even harder into the fictional gore this time around.

They could remove the blood and turn off the x-ray effects on things like Fatal Blows, but it goes much deeper than that.

How do you tone down a character like Havik who beats people by ripping off his own arms, snapping his neck backwards and pierces his opponents skull with his broken arm bones?

That's a lot of work to go back over when like we said earlier, MK1 probably won't be hurting for sales at all.

So what do you all think, would Mortal Kombat 1 be better with a violence toggle options, and would you ever use it?

Let us know in the polls below.