The online system behind The King of Fighters 15 matchmaking has been reportedly broken since the game’s launch on February 14, 2022. While many don’t experience any issues with online matchmaking, a sizable portion of The King of Fighters community has reported that trying to get an online match can take up to half an hour. SNK has acknowledged matchmaking issues within the first few weeks of the game’s launch, but there has been little to no progress on when The King of Fighters 15 matchmaking will be patched.
Will The King of Fighters 15 matchmaking be fixed?
It’s not yet known what the cause is behind The King of Fighters 15 matchmaking woes or whether it will ever be fixed completely. However, it is clear that this problem has impacted many fans who simply want to play the game after paying the full price of $59.99. A simple search for the term “matchmaking” in the r/kof Reddit yields a long list of threads stating how matchmaking is a nightmare and asking whether it is still broken. All told, it’s a rather strange problem considering that SNK’s other fighters including King of Fighters XIII and 2002 Unlimited Match don’t seem to have the same matchmaking issues, at least to this extent.
According to user rxdazn who has investigated the issue on both the r/kof and r/Fighters Reddits, The King of Fighters 15 matchmaking system can lead players to queue up for a casual or ranked game for up to 30 minutes, and some can’t find online matches at all despite hours of waiting. The issue apparently occurs “on every platform” (rxdazn notes that the PC community is the most vocal about the subject, and it does look like it may be the most impacted) and “in every region” regardless of the search settings of affected players.
Since The King of Fighters XV has a decent number of concurrent users which ranges (at the time of this writing) from about 1,000 to 2,000 players according to the game’s page on SteamDB, with a nice bump in activity after the much-anticipated character Omega Rugal was released on April 14, the problem doesn’t seem to stem from a low player base.
Instead, the user rxdazn believes that “the problem stems from the core logic of KoF 15’s matchmaker.” In a longer, more detailed response the user details on the Steam forums, the issue could be based on a rumor that the game groups players by Windows region settings. Regardless, it would seem that the best way to play an online match right now is to ignore the standard matchmaking option altogether, head to a Discord dedicated to KoF 15, and connect directly to another player through a private match.
SNK did acknowledge matchmaking issues, along with many other issues with the game, about two weeks after the game’s launch, and has asked on March 21 for users to provide feedback on the issue. Since then, however, not much has been stated by the developer as far as a solution.
In other news, Mario Golf has been added to Nintendo Switch Online N64 library, and Halo Infinite Season 2 maps Breaker and Catalyst have been showcase in a gorgeous flythrough trailer.
