Riot Games pulls the plug on tag-team fighter 2XKO less than a year after launch amid layoffs

Riot Games has confirmed that active development on its free-to-play fighting game 2XKO will end in December 2026, less than a year after the title's full launch in January. According to the official announcement, servers will stay online, and the game will remain free-to-play on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, but Riot isn't planning any further champions, seasons, or major content updates beyond a final bug-fix patch. The move follows earlier layoffs that cut close to half the team working on the game after its momentum began slowing.

Purchases to get refunded while servers stay online, for now

Riot says the decision came down to retention numbers, despite well-received champion launches throughout the year, including Akali, Senna, and Thresh. As part of the wind-down, the studio is refunding all KO Points and Starter Edition purchases made before August 20, unlocking every champion in the game for free, and bundling most cosmetics into a single one-time $39.99 purchase.

The game isn't stopping cold. Two final champions, Lux and Samira, are still set to arrive in September and October before 2XKO settles into a purely maintenance state, with Ranked Mode, Battle Passes, and seasonal content all being stripped out entirely. Riot has stressed the decision wasn't made lightly, saying the team weighed many options like shrinking headcount, adjusting the patch cadence, and reworking the business model before ultimately deciding to finish existing content and step back from active development.

2XKO's wind-down extends a pattern for Riot outside its core lineup of League of Legends, Valorant, and Teamfight Tactics. The publisher shut down Riot Forge in January 2024 after just six released titles, shrank Legends of Runeterra's team while deprioritizing its competitive scene, and canceled the Hytale sandbox RPG in 2025 before selling the project back to its original developers.

A brutal numbers game in action

Riot's own explanation points to a structural pattern: sustaining a free-to-play live-service game requires a player base that niche genres have consistently failed to reach compared to League and Valorant. The company acknowledged that dedicated tag-fighter fans loved 2XKO, but said most other fighting game players never found a reason to stick around. Riot says it will "head back into the R&D lab" ahead of its next attempt at a new genre, leaving its in-development League of Legends MMO as one of the last major bets left standing from its recent diversification push. The list places 2XKO alongside a growing graveyard of ambitious live-service titles that have struggled to find a lasting audience across the industry in recent years.