In applied computer science, not citing recent literature (and in this case, "recent" really means "the last couple of years") correlates very strongly with rejection. Essentially, when I review a paper where all references are old according to the standards of the field, the reason can be either that:

1. there is newer related work, and the author is not aware of it or wilfully ignores it
2. there is indeed no recent related work; this is at least an indicator that the problem is either solved or deemed irrelevant by the community
3. the paper has been written a long time ago and has been rejected at multiple previous attempts at publication
4. the paper author is just a crank, who believes he has redefined (for instance) the concept of object-oriented programming

Points 1, 3 and 4 all warrant rejection on their own. Point 2 is at least a strong indicator that a paper should be rejected. That being said, I cannot remember ever rejecting a paper only for failing to cite recent literature. In all cases that come to my mind, this was just a minor sidenote and the paper actually got rejected for much more fundamental issues.

In applied computer science, not citing recent literature (and in this case, "recent" really means "the last couple of years") correlates very strongly with rejection. Essentially, when I review a paper where all references are old according to the standards of the field, the reason can be either that:

1. there is newer related work, and the author is not aware of it or wilfully ignores it
2. there is indeed no recent related work; this is at least an indicator that the problem is either solved or deemed irrelevant by the community
3. the paper has been written a long time ago and has been rejected at multiple previous attempts at publication
4. the paper author is just a crank, who believes he has redefined (for instance) the concept of object-oriented programming

Points 1 and 4 warrant rejection on their own. Point 2 and 3 are at least a strong indicator that a paper should be rejected. That being said, I cannot remember ever rejecting a paper only for failing to cite recent literature. In all cases that come to my mind, this was just a minor sidenote and the paper actually got rejected for much more fundamental issues.