Riot Responds to Concerns Over Competitive Integrity of 2XKO

If you've been out of the loop on the recent 2XKO discourse, a tweet from JurassicOri has reignited a discussion that hasn't truly been around since Mortal Kombat X era and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. 

Though the broader topic here goes way beyond testing, and has been an issue with some regions getting to play the game early, or people playing on cracked beta releases to get ahead of the competition.

Ori's thread truly blew up when Punk chimed and expressed a similar sentiment.

The response to this has gotten big enough, that 2XKO's Editor-in-Chief, Ben Forbes (a.k.a. draggles), decided to clear up any potential misinformation and show his perspective on this issue.

Basically, from Riot's perspective, they're trying to keep the competitive advantage to a minimum, which is why they heavily restrict the time window on these recent tests compared to what they've done in the past. In theory, this should make the impact negligible.

Earlier this week, Yohosie shared a general overview of what's coming in the next patch, which is likely meant to address the complaint of those who were given the preview labbing things ahead of time.

Ultimately there is no real consensus that be found here, because the issue is ideological first and foremost. Will Rooflemonger suddenly win a tournament just because he got early access? Probably not. But pro players can certainly carry those few hours of exposure and advanced knowledge further than most people, and that's where the issue lies.

It's sort of a sliding spectrum. One extreme is total purism. Nobody under any circumstances should be allowed to have exclusive access, no matter how extensive, unless they are then banned from competing. The other extreme is just saying anything goes and letting the competition sort people out.

I imagine most people are somewhere closer to the middle. We can acknowledge that the usefulness of advanced access heavily depends on context. How long is it? How close is the test version to final release? What's the time gap between the test and the public patch? Who are the people included in the test? All of these factors decide the final results.

Hell, we've seen people grinding out the cracked beta for Street Fighter 6, and they're certainly not dominating the Top 8s, even regional ones. Tekken 7 had the drama surrounding Japanese players getting to play it early, yet the competitive scene was eventually dominated by people who had to learn the game under the most adverse conditions. The reality is that we never truly saw a strong correlation between getting more time with the game and getting far ahead of everyone.

Part of this is related to something that Ben mentioned about labbing. There is only so much one person can figure out. Once more people start playing, more tech gets discovered, the skill range from top to bottom begins to expand, and the average skill level is continuously lifted over time. If you want to test this, pick any long-running competitive game, and check how tournaments looked at the beginning of its lifetime, versus how they look now.

That said, final results are also not the be all, end all here. Yes the greater picture suggests that this advanced access doesn't define the comp scene, but it doesn't mean that it can't provide advantage at all, and when something like that is allowed to happen, it's not great for the community. You want both spectators and players to feel assured of the level playing field for all, which exclusive tests inherently go against.

Most big competitive titles avoid this through PBEs, test builds that allow everyone to experience the changes before they roll out, and that's something that draggles also commented on.

It's honestly a bit confusing why this is an issue for 2XKO but worked for Valorant (though it was put on indefinite pause) and League of Legends. We will probably never know, because companies are usually secretive about in-depth marketing info like this, but if this happened, it would likely be the first time for fighting games.