Riot Games will end active development on 2XKO in December 2026, the company announced on August 20, less than a year after the League of Legends tag fighter's full launch in January. Servers will stay online beyond 2026 and offline play is unaffected, so the game remains playable and free to download on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but no further major content is planned after October.
Riot said the decision came down to retention rather than a single bad quarter. It evaluated revenue, new players and engagement across 2026 and found that the audience never stuck.
Over the last few months, we've been monitoring 2XKO's trajectory closely, and what we've seen is painting a clear, consistent picture: while a lot of you jumped in to try the game and there's an incredible community that plays every day, we haven't seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability.
The releases of Akali, Senna and Thresh, the PVE mode The Climb and a year of competitive events all drew positive reactions, Riot said, but produced "no meaningful, sustained change in 2XKO's trajectory; only a fraction of what it would take to trend toward sustainability." The company added that the game "costs us substantially more to operate than it brings in, and engagement has stayed relatively flat despite our larger updates," and that it weighed cutting team size further, stretching patch schedules and changing the business model before settling on finishing the work in progress and stopping. Riot laid off roughly 80 developers from the project in February, about a month after the full release, while saying at the time that it remained committed to it.
What happens between now and December
2XKO's remaining roadmap
- August 20: KO Points purchases and prepaid cards are disabled, and refunds begin. PC refunds for KO Points and the 2XKO Starter Edition go back to the original payment method, most within two weeks and all of them targeted for completion by November 2026; PlayStation and Xbox purchases are refunded through those platforms.
- September 8, patch 1.3.1: Lux, described by Riot as a "shoto-inspired character with a simple kit," joins the roster. Every champion is unlocked for all players, a $39.99 Ultimate Bundle collects most cosmetic content, and Battle Passes, KO Points, Champion Tokens, seasons and events are removed. The Credits cap is lifted from 12,000, ranked lobbies are disabled so matchmaking runs from a single pool per server, and voice chat is added to large maps and private lobbies.
- October, patch 1.3.3: Samira, the Desert Rose, arrives as the final champion in what is also the final major content update, bringing the roster to 17 characters.
- November: the last 2XKO Competitive Series event runs, with Riot funding prizing for Major and Challenger events through the end of the year.
- December, patch 1.3.5: a closing bug-fix patch with no new content.
Anything players already own stays in their accounts, and casual lobbies will continue to matchmake by skill. From 2027, tournament organisers can keep running offline and online 2XKO events under Riot's community competition guidelines.
Riot confirmed the fighting game project in 2019 after two years of speculation and released 2XKO in October 2025, close to a decade of work for a 2v2 assist fighter that ends with 17 characters. It was the third most-played game at Evo 2026 behind Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, where Lux and Samira were announced. "Not the news we wanted to hear today," the tournament said after the announcement. "Sending love to the team who worked so hard to bring the game to life."
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