Dead or Alive 6 Last Round launches with 440 DLCs, forces players to rebuy content they already own

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round, Koei Tecmo's re-release of the 2019 fighting game Dead or Alive 6, hit Steam on June 25 to Mostly Negative reviews. Players are furious about unfixed bugs carried over from the original, a lack of rollback netcode, and being made to pay again for DLC they already purchased.

The $40 package includes five extra characters, some graphical improvements, and a new photo mode — but no rollback netcode, which is considered a baseline feature for any fighting game in 2026. The Steam store lists 440 individual DLC items, though some are bundle versions of others and several characters are included in the full game or available free via the Core Fighters version. The real problem is that a significant portion of that DLC is simply carried over from the 2019 release and not included in the $40 price. Two characters — Mai Shiranui and Kula Diamond, both from SNK's King of Fighters franchise — cannot be transferred from the original game at all due to apparent licensing issues, meaning owners must repurchase them outright. Making things worse, individual character prices have jumped from $8 to $11 since the re-release. On top of that, certain costumes from the original game can't be bought in Last Round at all. There is technically a workaround — booting up the original Dead or Alive 6 to purchase them there and then transferring — but Koei Tecmo delisted the original versions on June 11, two weeks before Last Round launched. Anyone who doesn't already own the original has no way to access those costumes.

Dead or Alive 6 originally launched in 2019 to a mixed reception, partly due to its aggressive DLC model — the base game shipped with a relatively small roster and leaned heavily on paid costume and character packs. The series has always been controversial for its monetization, and Last Round was an opportunity to address those criticisms. Instead, it appears to have doubled down. The SNK licensing situation is a genuine complication, but the price increases and the inaccessible costume situation are squarely on Koei Tecmo.

Community reaction on Reddit and Steam has been sharply negative, with players calling the re-release a cash grab rather than a meaningful upgrade. Unless Koei Tecmo addresses the content transfer issues and the missing costumes, Last Round looks set to remain in Mostly Negative territory.