Riot Games has confirmed that active development on its tag team fighting game 2XKO will conclude in December 2026, less than a year after the title’s full launch. The move follows earlier layoffs that cut close to half the team working on the game after its momentum began slowing following the console release, signaling that the studio had been reassessing the project’s long term viability for some time before this decision was made.
Servers will remain online and the game will stay playable for free across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and X, though no further champions, seasons or major content updates are planned beyond a final bug fix patch. Riot said the decision came down to retention numbers that never trended toward sustainability, despite well received champion launches such as Akali, Senna and Thresh throughout 2026. As part of the wind down, the studio is refunding all KO Points and Starter Edition purchases made before August 20, unlocking every champion for free, and bundling most cosmetics into a one time 39.99 dollar purchase. Two final champions, Lux and Samira, are still set to arrive in September and October before the game shifts entirely into maintenance mode, with Ranked Mode, Battle Passes and seasonal content being removed altogether.
Riot said the decision was not made hastily, noting that the team had considered shrinking headcount, adjusting the patch cadence, or reworking the business model before ultimately concluding that finishing existing content and stepping back from active development was the most sustainable path forward. The wind down fits into a broader pattern of retreats from Riot’s attempts to diversify beyond its core titles, following the 2024 shutdown of its indie publishing label Riot Forge, a significant restructuring of its digital card game Legends of Runeterra, the scrapping of its planned Riot Esports Network streaming platform, and the 2025 cancellation of its Minecraft inspired sandbox project Hytale, which was later sold back to its original developers.
Riot acknowledged that diehard tag fighter players had embraced 2XKO, but said most other fighting game players struggled to find sustained reasons to stick with the title, pointing to a structural challenge the company has now encountered multiple times, where launching a free to play, live service game in a niche genre has consistently fallen short of the player base needed to justify continued investment compared to League of Legends and Valorant. The studio has signaled it is not abandoning experimentation altogether, saying it will return to research and development ahead of its next attempt at a new genre, though its track record outside its three core titles remains mixed following a string of scaled back or shelved projects over the past two and a half years.
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