WWE 2K22 is launching with 36 wrestlers who are no longer part of WWE, including Cesaro, Braun Strowman, Ember Moon, William Regal, and Jeff Hardy.
The upcoming WWE 2K22 will launch with 36 wrestlers who are no longer employed by the WWE, thanks to a number of budget cuts leading to wrestlers being let go, and talent walking out of their own accord. WWE 2K22 will also feature other wrestlers who aren’t on the roster, including classic talent (some of whom are deceased), and Machine Gun Kelly will be a WWE 2K22 DLC character.
The WWE has been on a firing spree over the past year, leading to speculation that the company is cutting talent to save costs ahead of a sale to a larger media conglomerate. This has resulted in some of the bigger names being snapped up by AEW. The problem is that the WWE produces annual video games and each character requires a lot of work to develop. If a wrestler is no longer with the company, then that means the WWE video game is going to have characters who aren’t with the company anymore, and may even be part of a competitor’s roster.
Now available online, WWE 2K22‘s game roster has lots of names that are no longer with the company. According to VGC, these total 36 fighters, and include Alexander Wolfe, Ariya Daivari, Billie Kay, Braun Strowman, Cesaro, Danny Burch, Ember Moon, Fandango, Great Metalik, Isaiah “Swerve” Scott, Jeff Hardy, John Morrison, Johnny Gargano, Kalisto, Karrion Kross, Keith Lee, Kyle O’Reilly, Lana, Lince Dorado, Mia Yim, Mickie James, Murphy, Nia Jax, Oney Lorcan, Peyton Royce, Samoa Joe, Shane McMahon, SLAPJACK, Tegan Nox, Brian Kendrick, Timothy Thatcher, Toni Storm, Tucker, Tyler Breeze, and William Regal. Wrestlers like Keith Lee are already part of AEW, which means WWE 2K22 will feature wrestlers that are part of their biggest competitor.
This phenomenon is nothing new, as fighting game characters cut at the last minute often include WWE wrestlers. There are plenty of wrestlers who have been fired over the years for various offenses, while some have walked out of the WWE over some dispute and jumped ship to another company. This leaves the developers of the WWE video games in a pickle and it has often resulted in characters being dummied out of games so that they can’t be accessed through normal gameplay.
The mass firings and walkouts over the past year have made the roster problem particularly noticeable for WWE 2k22. The situation is so bad that these wrestlers can’t be dummied out without slashing the roster. As such, WWE fans will have the chance to use wrestlers who are no longer part of the company. The WWE 2K22 MyGM mode previews have been positive so far and fans are hoping that the series can course correct, following the poor response to the last few WWE games that were released.
WWE 2K22 will be released for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on March 8, 2022.
Source: VGC
About The Author
