{"id":820311,"date":"2026-08-20T21:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/820311\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T21:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:52:09","slug":"riot-is-already-killing-its-2xko-fighting-game-less-than-a-year-after-launching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/820311\/","title":{"rendered":"Riot Is Already Killing Its 2XKO Fighting Game Less Than A Year After Launching"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Riot plans to end active development on its <a href=\"https:\/\/kotaku.com\/project-l-2xko-league-of-legends-riot-games-1851278882\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tag-team fighting game 2XKO<\/a> in December. On the game\u2019s website, Riot shared that while the game saw a lot of initial interest, \u201cwe haven\u2019t seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability.\u201d And because of that, Riot will end active development on 2XKO at the end of the year. The game officially launched on PC and consoles in January.<\/p>\n<p>Riot plans to work on game improvements, bug fixes, and some content before development ceases. After that, it\u2019ll leave the servers on and just\u2026walk away. Here\u2019s the game\u2019s detailed end-of-life roadmap.<\/p>\n<p>Servers will remain on beyond 2026, and 2XKO will be playable on all platforms. Through the rest of 2026, we\u2019ll be introducing content, feature improvements, and two new champions (Lux and Samira), with the intent to deliver our final bug fix patch in December of this year. After that, servers will remain on to support online play. Offline play is unaffected. We\u2019ll give advanced notice if any of that changes.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re unlocking all champs. We\u2019re also bundling most cosmetic items, and refunding all money spent in 2XKO on or before August 20. Any content owned is yours to keep. Avatar and player profile items will be unlockable for Credits. This will happen in patch 1.3.1 (September).<\/p>\n<p>2XKO was troubled from the start. The game\u2019s console launch <a href=\"https:\/\/kotaku.com\/2xko-ps5-league-legends-fighting-game-issues-2000661845\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">was plagued with issues,<\/a> and Riot added to that inauspicious beginning <a href=\"https:\/\/kotaku.com\/2xko-layoffs-league-legends-riot-update-2000666998\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">by laying off 80 people<\/a> working on the game barely a month out from release. After the rocky start, 2XKO was featured in several fighting game tournaments, <a href=\"https:\/\/kotaku.com\/evo-2026-overview-what-to-watch-2xko-rivals-of-aether-2-2000710640\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">debuting on the EVO main stage<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>For a big publisher, Riot is being surprisingly candid about why it\u2019s ending active development on the game. It spoke about high interest from players and high-level play in the game but said that those elements were not enough to drive 2KXO to the overall minimum threshold of player retention that Riot felt was necessary to sustain the game. There is a deep and bitter irony in how Riot says it had originally wished to build the game\u2019s audience over time by \u201cearning the trust of lots of core fighting game players, and growing into a larger player base when more features and content came online,\u201d only to can the game not even a year after it came out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riot plans to end active development on its tag-team fighting game 2XKO in December. On the game\u2019s website,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[215468,18302,74],"class_list":["post-820311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-2xko","tag-riot-games","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820311","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=820311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}