Riot Games co-founder and co-chairman Mark Merrill doesn’t believe League of Legends fighting game 2XKO is a mistake, despite the company’s decision to halt further development of the game at the end of 2026. He said the project was of high quality but wouldn’t gain the audience it needed to survive long-term as a free-to-play game with constant updates. He talked about this on stage at PAX West 2026 in Seattle.
In a conversation with host Greg Miller, Merrill recalled the founding of 2XKO. The starting point for the project was a meeting with Tom Cannon and Tony Cannon, founders of the Evolution Championship Series. Riot wants to create a better competitive environment for fighting game fans, improve online play, and integrate a free-to-play model with the League of Legends universe.
“First of all, I don’t think 2XKO was a mistake,” Merrill said.
According to him, the team created a beautiful game and took certain risks, including the team battle system. However, a high-quality game is not enough. Merrill noted that free-to-play games that are constantly updated should have very significant results because they don’t just compete with other games.
“We’re competing for people’s attention and time, and the bar is very high,” a Riot executive explained.
Developers recalled that more than 20,000 games were released on Steam every year, and users received an almost endless stream of materials on social networks and YouTube at the same time. For a game to form a community that can last for years, it must succeed on multiple fronts simultaneously and gain a sufficient player base. According to Merrill, 2XKO has not reached this stage.
“You can’t get everything right every time. But that doesn’t mean we’re not proud of the game, and it doesn’t mean we won’t take bigger risks in the future,” he said, adding that the company still has many projects in development.
Riot previously announced the end of active development of 2XKO. The team plans to complete the remaining improvements and content, and a final bug fix patch will be released in December. Thereafter, servers will continue to operate and the game will remain free on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
