The Assassination of SNK by the Coward Misk Foundation

I’ve written before about the problem with guest characters in fighting games, but even then, I never thought it would get this bad. Last week, SNK revealed a new character from their highly anticipated Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Another was revealed this week. Some background is necessary to understand why this is a big deal. City of the Wolves is the long-awaited sequel to SNK’s classic fighting game Garou: Mark of the Wolves (confusingly, this game is primarily known by a truncated version of the Japanese series name, Garou Densetsu, rather than the international series name, Fatal Fury, but rest assured that it is a Fatal Fury game), often regarded as a high-water mark for the glory days of 2D fighting games. Despite being acclaimed, the changing industry landscape and growing debt, SNK went bankrupt. The company would be revived as SNK Playmore, but a planned sequel never came to fruition. SNK Playmore would soon find their own financial troubles, and they would largely retreat from console and arcade games to focus on mobile and casino games. Later, investment from the Chinese company Leyou would pull SNK back into making console games, and it wasn’t long before they were back to making fighting games. The results were dubious at first. While The King of Fighters XIV had a solid mechanical foundation, it had poor online play and atrocious visuals. Their revival of Samurai Shodown showed improvement in graphics, but the online experience was still very disappointing. With The King of Fighters XV, they seemed to have finally adopted a netcode that would satisfy players, but issues with matchmaking at launch dampened its reception. However, they seemed poised to finally have an unqualified victory with the unveiling of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Not only was it a revival of one of the most highly-regarded series in fighting games, it seemed to indicate that SNK had finally gotten their technical troubles sorted out. It looked to be more than just competent; it looked truly impressive.

Of course, it just couldn’t go smoothly, could it? To understand what went wrong, we need to go back a few years. Some time before the release of The King of Fighters XV, SNK found a new majority shareholder in Misk Foundation. If you’re unfamiliar, Misk is the business founded by the journalist-killing, country-starving, de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. There are all sorts of reasons that one could choose to avoid SNK on the grounds of morality. At the same time, they’re a legacy studio with a lot of very talented people working hard to make good games, and they didn’t get to decide who owns them. Up until now, it at least could be said that the influence of Mohammed bin Salman and other Saudi business interests could not be directly felt on the games themselves. While Misk is the controlling shareholder, SNK’s creative independence seemed to be intact. As of the last couple weeks, that is no longer the case.

As I mentioned at the start of this article, there are two guest characters that will be in City of the Wolves at launch that were recently announced. Not Street Fighter’s Ken and Chun-li; they were previously announced as being part of the first season of DLC for the game. As guest characters go, they’re inoffensive. Certainly these characters were added to the game for business reasons, but they’re also an acknowledgement of the shared history of these series, including a handful of crossover games from the late 1990s and early 2000s. We haven’t seen them in action yet, but it’s easy to see them fitting into the game just fine. If they were the only guests, or if they precipitated guests from other fighting games, things wouldn’t be so bad.

March 26, 2025. A video is uploaded to SNK’s YouTube channel. It seems to relate to a promotion for City of the Wolves involving renowned Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. It was so much more than that. This trailer revealed that Ronaldo would be a playable character in City of the Wolves. Out of seventeen characters in the game’s launch roster, one of them is Cristiano Ronaldo. He fights with a combination of martial arts and soccer maneuvers. Watching this, all I could hope was that against all odds, it was an April Fool’s Day prank that went up too early. Of course, I knew that wasn’t true.

On one hand, it’s easy to see what Ronaldo brings to the table. He’s a massively popular figure, particularly in Latin America, a region where SNK has historically enjoyed much broader reception than the usual gaming priority markets. He’s also popular in the Middle East, a growing region for fighting games. He has an enormous social media following that will put a lot of eyes on the game. It makes good business sense. On the other hand, it’s easy to see how utterly awful this is for the game. To begin, Ronaldo has several times been accused of sexual misconduct, something fans of rival football teams are eager to bring up. In the grand scheme of things, sexual misconduct is a more severe issue than any video game. But many of the other issues with Ronaldo’s inclusion would still be present if he were replaced with, say, Lionel Messi or Kylian Mbappé. Of course, it had to be Ronaldo. He’s the star player of Al Nassr FC, one of the top professional clubs in Saudi Arabia, and one majority owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. It’s a blatantly cynical inclusion in theory, and it isn’t any better in practice. While there may be some potential for a soccer-playing fighter (SNK have previously attempted a basketball-wielding fighter with Lucky Glauber in The King of Fighters), Ronaldo’s animations are horribly out of place. It will be impossible to see him in the game without being reminded that he’s only there for business reasons. And for a game with a limited roster, there are so many other characters they could have included.

Remember when I said two characters were revealed? Well, the next one is a doozy. April 3, 2025. Enter Salvatore Ganacci. Do you know who that is? Neither did I. He’s a European DJ. He has had some international success, but if you’ve been paying attention to the trend of this article, you can probably guess what country he is primarily popular in. Ganacci has played a lot of events in Saudi Arabia, including several related to their royal family. His trailer suggests that he’s been a lifelong fan of Fatal Fury. Maybe that’s true. I don’t really care. Seeing his character in action just makes it all the more baffling. While Ronaldo may have some creativity in his moveset, Ganacci seems like a complete whiff. I couldn’t begin to describe what kind of character he’s supposed to be. He combines breakdancing with… swimming? It’s inscrutable. And again, there are only seventeen characters in this game. More than ten percent of the roster is celebrities.

I don’t even know what to do about this. Part of me wants this game to fail to teach them a lesson, that we aren’t just a bunch of pigs who will eat whatever slop we’re given. The other part of me recognizes how many people at SNK want this game to be good and have done everything in their power to achieve that, but the powers that be have saddled them with one of the worst creative decisions I’ve ever seen in a fighting game. To do this after SNK did so much to earn the trust of the community is just cruel. If this game is a success, will SNK get some of their autonomy back, or will that success be taken as a sign that callous marketing gimmicks work? I’ve abandoned the mantra of “vote with your wallet” because I’ve seen it fail too many times. But for a variety of reasons, I can’t say I’m comfortable buying this game, at least not at launch. However much that hurts me, I can only imagine that it hurts the people making the game more.