Riot Games’ ambitious adventure to conquer the fighting game genre with the brand values of the League of Legends universe is coming to an end. As officially announced by the publisher, active development of 2XKO will end at the end of December 2026. While the free-to-play game attracted a lot of curiosity when it launched at the beginning of the year, long-term user numbers have been far lower than expected. The operating costs of the live broadcast service far exceed revenue, which is why it is no longer financially reasonable to continue, according to officials.
The game’s problems became apparent shortly after its initial release. Despite positive feedback from pro players and success at major esports tournaments like EVO, Riot Games laid off nearly 80 employees from its development team within weeks of launch as part of a wave of layoffs.
Over the next few months, remaining studios tried to stem the decline with regular content updates, balance adjustments, and new characters like Akali, Senna, and Thresh. However, as the number of players has been at a low level for a long time, and direct competitors in the fighting game genre have also seized market share, management has now decided to end active live broadcast service support in an orderly manner.
In an effort not to offend its loyal community as it bids farewell, Riot Games has announced a series of measures aimed at keeping the game playable and fair. All in-game purchases and microtransactions made before August 20th will be fully refunded to players. However, affected individuals can retain all previously launched content.
With the major update in September, the publisher will also permanently unlock all heroes for free for the entire player base. Offering heavily discounted packages to fans who want to purchase leftover cosmetics. There are still some final pieces to the program in the remaining months before the end of the year. In addition to already-announced champion Lux, the last planned fighter, Samira, will join the roster in October. The last bit is the last bug fix patch of December.
While the structured ranked mode that combined player pools is being scrapped, there’s at least some good news for remaining fans: servers for the online game will remain accessible on PC and consoles indefinitely after 2026, and offline modes will also remain permanently available without restrictions. Riot explains that they hope to use the experience gained to drive stronger returns for other types of projects in the future.
