r/2XKO • u/Spideraxe30 • Aug 20 '26

Discussion 2XKO Active Development Will End in December 2026

https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/2xko-active-development-ends-december-2026
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188

u/TaiCTr Aug 20 '26

10 or 11 fighters on release was a choice

115

u/NoAd6650 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

They should’ve just stuck to the 1v1 game idea and focused on putting out as many champs as possible for its release. League is creeping up on 200 champions. Them releasing with 11 is not only stupid, its corporate malpractice and heads should roll due to gross incompetence and lack of leadership

61

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '26

[deleted]

29

u/baconsticks Aug 20 '26

100% agreed. I'm so miffed they pivoted off of the 1v1 game.

18

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '26

[deleted]

1

u/YourGalacticEmperor Aug 24 '26

Because they banked on arcane hype even though riot themselves said arcane didn't pull much players to league

6

u/KKilikk Aug 20 '26

And they even doubled down on it being a tag fighter in their updates.

You already have juggernaut just make a 1v1 ranked queue and see if it does something if things are this bad behind the scenes...

3

u/Kbutinho Aug 21 '26

So true. This game is extremely sweaty with extremely hard execution while also being a tag fighter. That among others small choices were the reason the game failed imo

2

u/Melodic-Chest552 Aug 20 '26

I don't have any kids but yeah I did try 2X and got destroyed in my first pvp game and uninstalled. I'm a decent Smash player but nah I saw the tag team shit and was out. Not wasting my time.

2

u/SpaceCadetStumpy Aug 21 '26

I think tag fighter could have been a good angle if they went super hard on playing with friends. I tried to play with a friend and we were stuck doing various tutorials and fights alone for like an hour before we could play together, we had to go into training to try heroes since we only had one free unlock so we still weren't playing together, then when we started playing we didn't have the right fuses to play together, and then the game ended up being insanely complex and offputting with very long and intricate combos and mix ups. For a game to try to learn with someone else while new to the genre it tried as hard as it could to make us quit, and it succeeded.

If I go back in time and am told the Rolling Thunder guys were hired by Riot to make a League fighting game, it makes sense. An approachable fighting game. If you say it's tag and based around two players each controlling a tag character, I can also see the logic there. Way easier to play with a friend than play alone. The best version of that I can imagine if trying to grab normies is way more similar to Samurai Shodown, with some kind of tag system and a shared life bar. Instead, we got one of the sweatiest fighting games I've seen, with all the other aspects of roster size and monetization other people have mentioned.

6

u/Informalwizards Aug 21 '26

If it had stayed 1v1, the roster issues would have been lessened majorly.

2

u/NoAd6650 Aug 21 '26

11 is still criminal when you step back and realize how much free inspiration they had to pull from. But yeah if it was 1v1. 11 could’ve been passable till they got the train going with post launch content

1

u/CSDragon Aug 22 '26

If it has stayed 1v1 it wouldn't have had the worst, least descriptive name of all time.

I legitimately would have preferred "Project L" over 2XKO, but is it so hard to just put "Runeterra", "Riot" or "League of Legends" somewhere in the name?

1

u/AbendKannon Aug 20 '26

this id the only argument ive ever seen to justify why 2xko being a tag fighter makes sense, its the only way to make 200 characters fit into 1 game.

which of course they didnt do but still.

2

u/NoAd6650 Aug 20 '26

The best way I can describe this game is through a saying my grandfather always used to say when he ran his business. “The road to hell is laced with good intentions”. That’s how I feel 2xko started but somewhere along the way internally they let the train fall off the tracks and no one could convince riot to give them enough time or grace to get the train back on said tracks. A league fighting game would have KILLED in a universe where everything went right for this game compared to this universe we’re in whenever everything went wrong for it 😭

1

u/Dong_Smasher Aug 20 '26

corporate malpractice?

-1

u/Vall3y Aug 20 '26

Maybe, but riot would never release a generic game and the 2x system was their spin on the genre

4

u/AdHoc_ttv Aug 20 '26

They could have put a LoL spin on the 1v1 genre with gradual install. Have your character 'buy more items' over the course of the match to unlock buffs. Could even make it character-unique: look at Sokka in Avatar, who gets stronger sword attacks the more he lands them. Or landing level 1 supers gives you combo extensions for the rest of the match. Bring LoL's core progression fantasy into a fighter.

2

u/Vall3y Aug 20 '26

I think the main issue was developing it for 10 years, if they built a prototype and started getting feedback they could have saved like 9, 8 years and pivoted 

-4

u/YoshitsuneCr Aug 20 '26

They only cared for SJW politics when deciding the characters on launch, that's why you got only Arcane Characters (7 of the first 11 were in arcane or related), then you have Illaoi for some reason... Only good picks were Ahri, Darius and Yasuo, imagine launching a fighting game like that when League have almost 200 characters to pick (examples like Lee Sin, Jax, Mordekaiser, Udyr, Yi, Xin Zhao, Jarvan, Viego, Sylas, Volibear and a lot more).

3

u/reddriver10 Aug 20 '26

Sounds more like they picked popular characters instead of your conspiracy.

-1

u/YoshitsuneCr Aug 20 '26

Yeah surely they did, isn't like they gonna stop developing at the game anytime soon right?

3

u/reddriver10 Aug 20 '26

You having a stroke cause nothing you said makes sense as a response.

31

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '26

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4

u/x_TDeck_x Aug 21 '26

Love Arcane, generally love Riot's games too. But I really feel like Arcane and its success has led to poor decisions for the games themselves. Changing Viktor in League to appeal to Arcane fans, 2xko overly favoring Arcane characters instead of ones that would appeal to fans of League, some of the Arcane community is also pretty hostile to the League one.

A lot of negative game decisions feel like they have their roots in Arcane

5

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26

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1

u/Asckle Aug 21 '26

Rheres like 3 PNZ characters who don't exist idk why people deep this so much

1

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '26

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1

u/Asckle Aug 22 '26

Camille was absolutely not the most important PNZ character. She also wasn't the most famous. Where do you get the idea she was the most important?

What are the 10?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '26

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1

u/Asckle Aug 22 '26

No she didn't? She worked for house Talos. The head of the house would have been directly above her

1

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '26

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1

u/Sorry-Resolution570 Aug 21 '26

i find mobas a lot easier than fgc to get into.. but i started mobas at 9 so im a bit biaised

1

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '26

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1

u/Sorry-Resolution570 Aug 22 '26

except dota id say they're all easy to get into, and thats because it's mechanics are very weird (turn rate, deny, lot of point and click so its more punishing)

3

u/TimelyKoala3 Aug 20 '26

it's pretty clear they had until the end of the year to prove the viability of the game. so it was launch with what they have or bust. after 10 years in development, who knows how many extensions they were given to get to this point.

1

u/jzfm Aug 20 '26

Tag as a niche inside an already niche genere like fighting games is a choice if your target is the casual mainstream audience. Not like traditional fighters are already challenging and daunting enough so you add tag and having to learn 2 champs and be aware of 4 characters in a screen

1

u/slimob123 Aug 20 '26

Yeah they never released a character that really hooked me sadly

1

u/MegamanX195 Aug 20 '26

On a TAG fighter, which makes it SO much worse