Koei Tecmo Delisted DOA6 for a Worse Version

A 70% positive user rating on Steam replaced by a 70% negative one. That's what happened when Koei Tecmo delisted Dead or Alive 6 on June 11 and launched Dead or Alive 6 Last Round on June 24, a $40 rerelease that players are calling a scam.

Last Round bundles five previously released DLC characters, five new costumes, a photo mode, and what the official website describes as improvements for "current-gen hardware." In practice, players say the visual changes are nearly invisible. Multiple Steam reviews point out that the pause menu still shows a graphic for the 2015 Steam controller. One reviewer called it a straight "copy-paste." Another said it's "the same exact game with the same bugs that were reported six years ago." At the time of writing, only 23% of Steam ratings are positive.

The DLC situation is where things get hostile. The Steam store page lists 440 individual pieces of DLC. Owners of the original game can transfer most of their purchased content to Last Round, but crossover characters Mai Shiranui and Kula Diamond are excluded. An explanation on the Team Ninja website confirmed that Mai, Kula, and their costumes cannot carry over, likely due to licensing with SNK. Both characters used to cost $8 each; they're now $11. Certain costumes from the original game also can't be purchased in Last Round at all, and since the original was delisted, new players have no way to access them.

I keep coming back to the delisting. If Last Round existed alongside the original as an upgrade path, this would be a mediocre rerelease that people could simply ignore. Instead, Koei Tecmo removed the better-reviewed version from sale and funnelled everyone toward a more expensive product with fewer consumer-friendly options. That's not an accident; it's a business decision, and it's makes it impossible to take the studio seriously when it talks about supporting Dead or Alive as a fighting game franchise. No rollback netcode, no crossplay, unfixed bugs from 2019, and a storefront groaning with costume DLC. As one Steam reviewer said, "Tecmo just sees this as the coomer franchise and thinks they can get away with the absolute bare minimum."

Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja have not publicly responded to the backlash. Their only post-launch communication so far has been to announce the first new DLC character.