Riot is ending development on its League of Legends fighting game
Overview & Key Takeaways
Riot Games is already winding down work on 2XKO, the free-to-play League of Legends fighting game, less than a year after its initial launch. Riot says "active development" will conclude at the end of 2026 because the company hasn't "seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability." Servers will […]
Riot Games is already winding down work on 2XKO, the free-to-play League of Legends fighting game, less than a year after its initial launch. Riot says “active development” will conclude at the end of 2026 because the company hasn’t “seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability.” Servers will stay online “beyond 2026,” and Riot is unlocking all playable characters and refunding money spent on the game.
2XKO launched in an early access beta on PC in October 2025 and hit PS5 and Xbox Series X / S in January. But shortly after, Riot announced it would be cutting staff working on the game, saying at the time that “overall momentum hasn’t reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term.”
It seems like things never turned a corner. Riot says in its Thursday announcement that it evaluated the game’s overall performance through the year, and while there were some bright spots with new character releases and competitive events, it wasn’t enough to keep the game going. “Even in these highlight moments, however, we saw no meaningful, sustained change in 2XKO’s trajectory; only a fraction of what it would take to trend toward sustainability,” Riot says. “Over time it became clear it would be impossible for us to continue actively developing the game as we are today.”
Riot says it would have continued development if “we saw any viable future,” but notes that “2XKO costs us substantially more to operate than it brings in, and engagement has stayed relatively flat despite our larger updates.”
2XKO is just the latest big live service bet that hasn’t panned out. Just this week, Bloomberg reported that Sony is stripping live service elements from its in-development multiplayer Horizon title. Highguard, following its closing announcement at December’s Game Awards, permanently shut down less than two months after launch. Earlier this year, Remedy announced a final major update for FBC: Firebreak, its live service shooter set in the Control universe — though like Riot’s plan for 2XKO, Remedy has chosen to keep Firebreak online. Even Fortnite isn’t immune to problems, as developer Epic Games laid off staff in March following a “downturn in Fortnite engagement.”
