Riot Games is ending active development of 2XKO, its tag-team fighting game built around League of Legends characters. The studio confirmed the 2XKO development ending in an August 20 update, with work on new content scheduled to stop by the close of 2026. Servers will stay online for multiplayer matches. The game also remains playable offline.
The decision follows a February 2026 round of layoffs that cut roughly 80 people from the 2XKO team. Riot said at the time that overall momentum had not reached the level needed to support a team of that size long term.
In this week’s update, the studio said it has spent recent months tracking the game’s numbers closely. The picture stayed consistent: plenty of players tried 2XKO, and a dedicated community logs in daily. Not enough new players stuck around, though, to put the game on a path toward sustainability.
The reasons behind 2XKO development ending
Riot framed the project as an attempt to build a fighter the wider fighting game community would embrace. The studio wanted to address gaps it saw on both the technical and business side of the genre. “It just wasn’t happening enough,” Riot wrote. “Even within the genre, diehard tag fighter players loved 2XKO, but most other fighting game players struggled to find reasons to stick with the game.”
The first half of 2026 went well by Riot’s own account. Even so, the studio saw no sustained change in the game’s trajectory afterward, only a fraction of what continued development would require.
Riot is not shutting the game down outright. Two new fighters and further bug fixes are still planned, leading up to a final patch in December. The full roster is being unlocked for all players at no cost.
Anyone who spent money on 2XKO on or before August 20 will get a refund. The studio said it is also working out what additional support it can offer tournament organizers, competitors, and creators who have backed the game since launch.
A fighter years in the making
Speculation about a League of Legends fighting game dates back to at least 2017. Riot did not confirm the project until 2019. After several rounds of iteration and a rebrand to 2XKO, the game launched into full release in January 2026, moving on from years spent in early access and closed testing.
2XKO never launched on Steam, so there is no public storefront data on how many people played it. The scale of the February layoffs told part of the story on its own: they landed only weeks after the full release, well before this week’s announcement.
Riot had said in February it remained fully committed to the game. That position has now shifted as player numbers failed to recover.
For now, players keep access to the servers and the current roster. A defined stretch of updates is still coming before development formally winds down at the end of the year.