{"id":468402,"date":"2026-02-14T15:12:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T15:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/468402\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T15:12:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T15:12:23","slug":"akali-and-senna-revealed-as-next-champions-for-2xko-as-director-discusses-future-of-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/468402\/","title":{"rendered":"Akali and Senna revealed as next champions for 2XKO as Director discusses future of the game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n       &#13;<\/p>\n<p>        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/dakota-hills.jpg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" alt=\"Dakota DarkHorse Hills\"\/><\/p>\n<p>       &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">&#13;<br \/>\n        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/13-akali-senna-2xko-champions.webp.webp\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"\/>&#13;\n        <\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n     &#13;<\/p>\n<p>This week came with the unfortunate news that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eventhubs.com\/news\/2026\/feb\/09\/2xko-riot-half-layoffs\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Riot Games is laying off around half of 2XKO&#8217;s development team<\/a>, but it seems there&#8217;s still quite a bit more content in the works for the title.&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n                &#13;\n                    <\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n               &#13;<br \/>\n        &#13;<br \/>\n      &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Riot just revealed the next two champions coming to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eventhubs.com\/moves\/2xko\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2XKO<\/a>&#8216;s first year while also discussing new features and the future outlook of the League of Legends fighting game.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\t  &#13;<br \/>\n\t&#13;<br \/>\n\t&#13;<br \/>\n     &#13;<br \/>\n          &#13;<br \/>\n     &#13;<br \/>\n     &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>In their latest weekly blog, 2XKO Director Shaun Rivera teased Akali and Senna as the newest characters joining the game in the coming months.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Akali is the next fighter coming later in Season 1 though we only get to see a handful of seconds of action for each upcoming addition here.&#13;\n<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>League&#8217;s Rogue Assassin is shown off slinging around her roped blades and teleporting across the screen.&#13;\n<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Senna will then likely kick off Season 2 with her powers over light and shadow as well as huge cannon because as an abridged vampire once said ladies &#8220;love cannons&#8221; (though I can&#8217;t use the exact quote here).<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p lang=\"tl\" dir=\"ltr\">Gameplay clip previews for Akali &amp; Senna in 2XKO. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Idcxynm2mP\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/Idcxynm2mP<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Fighting Game Anniversaries (@FGAnniversaries) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FGAnniversaries\/status\/2022419439971635594?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">February 13, 2026<\/a> &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>These reveals could be seen as Riot attempting to do some damage control following the layoffs, but the team is at least openly talking about what they&#8217;re doing with the game.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no mention made as to how the reduced team is going to impact development moving forward, however, Rivera shares three main points they&#8217;re focusing in on.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Duo play is the first subject where the devs are finally working on a Local Duo Mode that lets you play couch co-op with a partner, and while they say they&#8217;re working on getting it into the game ASAP, it&#8217;s not ready just yet.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Core gameplay is the next section where Rivera addresses some of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eventhubs.com\/news\/2026\/jan\/30\/2xko-changes-director-terrified\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">concern he raised over previous statements about changing the gameplay experience<\/a> with some &#8220;big swings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve seen the conversation about what our core gameplay could or should look like in the future, and we want to clear one thing up. We love that 2XKO is fast-paced, allowing your reactions and creativity to shine while providing a ton of depth to dig into. The skill ceiling of this game is high, and that&#8217;s where it&#8217;s gonna stay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll continue making balance changes that hit outliers in the meta while keeping the sauce of every character. At a high level, we want every champion to have defined strengths and weaknesses, and right now that\u2019s not clear enough across all of the cast.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Yasuo and Ekko are unsurprisingly two examples of fighters that still don&#8217;t really have enough pronounced weaknesses which are brought up here.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Rivera discusses 2XKO&#8217;s community and competitive programs, and it sounds like they&#8217;re actually about to try something pretty cool and unique.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>2XKO&#8217;s team is working on a program that will give local tournament organizers access to exclusive in-game prizing that can&#8217;t be obtained anywhere else though they do go into detail as to what those prizes could be \u2014 but it&#8217;s still a neat idea to receive a special skin or title for topping your local.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, Rivera states they are still working on fixing the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eventhubs.com\/news\/2026\/jan\/28\/2xko-statement-issues-console\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">screen tearing issues in 2XKO on console<\/a> as well as refining their Ranked online mode.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;ll still probably be a while before we see more of Akali and especially Senna in action, but now we know 3 out of the 5 champions planned for 2XKO&#8217;s first year since Caitlyn joined at launch.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>This should cover the character releases for the first half of 2026, so we&#8217;ll have to wait and see who the final two are going to be.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The development team certainly has their work cut out for them, however, there&#8217;s still a lot of passion and talent that are trying hard to make 2XKO a success for Riot and the players.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>We would of course like to hear more about the impact of the layoffs and how the game is being monetized, but that&#8217;s probably not going to happen with Riot.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>At least the 2XKO devs are remaining very open in their communication with the community as to what they&#8217;re working on and looking at, and you can find their full blog post below.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p lang=\"zxx\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3skZiLEiJs\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/t.co\/3skZiLEiJs<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 2XKO (@Play2XKO) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Play2XKO\/status\/2022413556600443270?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">February 13, 2026<\/a> &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;\n<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n     &#13;<br \/>\n      &#13;<br \/>\n\t  &#13;<br \/>\n\t  &#13;<br \/>\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; This week came with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[115502,74],"class_list":["post-468402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-2xko-news","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}