Riot Will End Active Development for 2XKO Less Than a Year Past Launch

After spending a very long time in development, 2XKO soft launched in October of 2025 and then officially launched in January of 2026 to much ridicule and scepticism.

Joking about the name aside, it featured a distinctly tiny roster of characters for a tag fighter. More importantly, tried to appeal to a non-existent audience of casual and beginner fighting game players who really want to play a tag fighter with very long combos and extensive technical depth.

In spite of all this, the game did prove its worth by maintaining a playerbase to this very moment, because fundamentally it was still a tag fighter designed by and for fans of the subgenre. Even with the small roster, the character kits, variety of fuse options, and the option of playing as a duo gave hardcore players a lot of depth to explore.

The people still working on 2XKO just kept polishing up the game, adding new characters faster than any other fighter (bar the one funded by Saudi Arabia), while also fleshing out an extra single-player mode and adding loads of cosmetics while Street Fighter 6 fans were still waiting to get that fourth costume during the game's fourth year.

It would be extremely disingenuous to say that 2XKO team wasn't doing lots of right decisions and delivering more of what people wanted. However, as a niche fighter, it seemingly didn't reach the expectations that Riot placed on the project. This resulted in a massive wave of layoffs that slashed half of the 2XKO team earlier this year.

While this no doubt hit the morale quite hard, the developers still kept improving, and that passion was reflected in the community. Say what you will about 2XKO, we all know there are plenty of haters out there, but it got people playing.

The game had 607 entrants at the past Combo Breaker 2026, that's more than any other game at the tournament aside from Strive, Tekken 8, and Street Fighter 6. It was similarly 4th most entered game at this past Evo, with 938 entrants. While we don't have numbers for Evo France 2026 yet, early bird leaderboards suggest it would once again be one of the most popular games at the event.

Evidently, none of this was good enough for Riot executives, as the official blog just announced that active development of 2XKO will cease in December of this year.

No new content will be made, but the servers will be kept active for the forseeable future.

Additionally, all champions will be unlocked, and all purchases made before or on August 20th will be refunded.