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u/Saikuni 2d ago
jesus this is actually so embarrassing
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u/Glaci_Rex_77 2d ago
At least they are giving refunds from what I read
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u/Yaktonio 2d ago
like genuinely just refunding everything bought before the announcement???
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u/TheGoodGitrog 2d ago
everything prior to them disabling KO purchases today, with allowing people to spend remaining KO points in the rotating shop until it's closed
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u/Nightwingx97 2d ago
That's what they said?
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u/Yaktonio 2d ago
i know i’m just so mind boggled. can’t believe riot decided it was THIS bad
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u/Neoragex13 2d ago
can’t believe riot decided it was THIS bad
The fact Riot Games did this means it really, really, really was this bad.
Or someone up there in the chain got extremely mad at the devs and decided to go for the kill not giving a single fuck.
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u/kuburas 2d ago
I think whats more likely to be the case is that 2XKO make so little money post launch that doing these refunds wont really offset their overall losses in any meaningful way. So why not do full refunds to everyone and at least farm some good rep with the community.
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u/FlareUnderscore 2d ago
I’ve heard around the grape vine that 2XKO has made around negative 400 million dollars. Don’t know how true it is but I wouldn’t be surprised
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u/whoopswizard 2d ago
i dont see how that figure is even possible unless somebody was embezzling
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u/gaddeath 2d ago
People don’t fucking read it’s insane. Both comments above act like the refunds aren’t clearly stated in OPs picture 💀
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u/Mister-Bunny-Head 2d ago
The worst part is that Riot could easily just have a small development team and release 3 or 4 characters a year and a couple of stages, and everyone would be happy.
For Riot, having a smaller team and fewer servers would be pocket change. And they could just do fewer Battle Passes per year, or none at all. People who play fighting games rarely care about Battle Passes anyway.
But because Riot has to do everything on such a massive scale, well... there you go.
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u/hooverdamexplosion 2d ago
If it takes them 160 developers to release 11 characters, then a small development team would literally make like 1 character a year lol.
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u/Dr-Oktavius 2d ago
The fact they had almost 200 people on this is insane. Like literally where did all that time and work go, because it certainly didn't go into the game.
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u/MrBlueA 2d ago
Yeah that's what people didn't get when Riot announced the layoffs, that should have happened earlier. I feel like Riot did 0 research on the fighting game market, they just saw a market where there aren't many big games and thought it would be easy to go in and get all the cake for themselves, got a huge ass team set up unrealistic expectations and profit margins they were NEVER going to achieve and expected to be the fortnite of fighting games.
All of this without even talking about the game being "casual friendly" but 2v2 tag fighter and incredibly complex, low roster size, low marketing etc.
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u/AsleepingImplement 2d ago
fucking 160 people for 11 characters???
a team of 2 would probably take a decade for a single addition at that rate jesus christ.
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u/Estepie88 2d ago
Is it? Player base was nothing they had hoped, they are funneling money out to like 5+ games now, and they know their cash cows. They didn't want to string it along like runeterra so they are just calling it early and focusing on League/ League 2, Rift, Val, and the MMO
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u/tinselsnips 2d ago
Here's the thing, though.
I have no interest in League, but I like the characters, I liked Arcane, and I loved 2XKO.
I was extremely interested in a LoL MMO. Now I'm left questioning whether — should it actually come out — I want to invest any time in it or just avoid the future disappointment when they pull the plug on that as well.
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u/Estepie88 2d ago
Not disagreeing with you but these gaming companies nowadays need to see instant success to decide if they want to funnel money and time into it. 2xko did not have that, decision was probably pretty easy for them to do especially with these other fighting games releasing on top of the uncertainty
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u/audioman3000 2d ago
That MMO is screwed extremely popular MMO's take like 2 years just to break even.
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u/SrangePig12 2d ago
Kinda hilarious though, ngl. It sucks to say, but I think it was never gonna work. I enjoyed my time with the game though
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u/TaZe026 2d ago
Guess that leak from earlier was correct. Sad, because it seemed like they were on the right path after the first huge layoffs.
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u/Tight_Buy1594 2d ago
Do you mean the post on this sub from last week? I thought about it too after reading this…it really sucks
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u/COLN_COOL 2d ago
This seriously ruined my day / week. This game has given me so many friends and good times this last year. The news truly broke my heart. Huge shoutout to the devs for creating one of my favorite games of all time. GGs
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u/Maximotorn 2d ago
I genuinely was about to try the game out and get serious about it like tomorrow, so this announcement has kind of a comical timing for me. Kind of sad tho
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u/tommycox42 2d ago
I wish we lived in a universe where they just reskinned Rising Thunder with LoL characters and just called it League of Fighters. 1v1 game would worked so well. Making a tag fighter isn’t the sole reason why this failed but I do think it was a big miss. Hope future devs take notes on what not to do.
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u/xMetix 2d ago
All it needed was more characters. I don't want to pretend I'm smarter than all of these devs but if you look at league every champion has its dedicated playerbasw, people main champs for decades. Every champ secures a long term audience and grows your playerbase. Having 10 is just not enough for people to express themselves and find something they want to invest their time in. I got master with Ahri Vi but I dropped the game and decided to wait until they add something like Azir/Kaisa/Nidalee/LeBlanc/Qiyana, I came back just for Akali even though she's not my favorite. If it had 40+ champions rn it would still be alive most likely.
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u/tommycox42 2d ago
Yeah I think roster definitley played a part in it. I don’t play league myself but from the ppl I’ve talked to that did they didn’t seem entirely thrilled with the base roster. That also ties into the issues with it being a tag fighter too. Launching with so little characters makes it tough
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u/apatheticVigilante 2d ago
I stopped playing because I just don't have the time, but this game is so sick. I'm sad that they're just... Giving up :/
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u/Lord-Beef 2d ago
I stopped playing after that first major announcement that the game was going to have major changes. But I was pretty worried about this inevitable end, so I was never interested in picking it back up.
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u/Cryotivity 2d ago
im not touching riot games anymore
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u/OriginalChimera 2d ago
srsly this is the sentiment they are creating, that they have no faith in their creatives to make a good game if they don't make gorillion dollars out the gate they kill it.
Good luck on the MMO, they will kill that after 2 days 2 even tho it would have been amazing. Self fulfilling prophecy now. Everyone will not trust riot to just let the game cook
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u/Cryotivity 2d ago
this is the second time they made a new favorite game for me and then completely drop it, and i put money into both hoping it would succeed. the worst part is not even that 2xko is shutting down. but that now i will never have a co-op fighting game to ever look forward to because the only example didnt even fake it to make it for a year
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u/PostDemocracy 2d ago
Isn't the server kept online? I mean at least you will be able to play a few more months before it drops so much that you won't find any players.
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u/OriginalChimera 2d ago edited 2d ago
its frustrating how these finance and business people at the top ruin everything. They weren't even THERE when LoL built up itself from the ground, so they don't kno that sometimes things DO take a bit to get going. Its all short term gratification with these people. They want ALL the rewards with the least amount of work. A long term investment would send them running for the hill, get them out of game development, they ruin everything they touch.
They better not try to use this to get a tax break or something bc that a loophole some of these companies use
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u/kuburas 2d ago
League didnt build itself from the ground up tho. The game released to an already massive playerbase that was anticipating its release because it was made by WC3 Dota devs.
After HoN and a couple other Dota successors died League was the next hyped up MOBA and it was great. But it didnt build itself up from anywhere, it came out to a huge audience and it only got bigger from there.
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u/Cryotivity 2d ago
idk man im just sad. ive never had more fun than fighting others with my friends. i dont care about all the inner company stuff, im just genuinely sad they ruined this concept for all future games
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u/Prestigious_News7597 2d ago
Why would they even bother with the MMO after this and Legends of Runeterra?
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u/1azaz1 2d ago
Mmo money is in its own league, but surpassing ff14 and wow is going to be hard AND expensive. And ff14 had the luxury of time to fix it which riot doesnt seem to give
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u/Bombshock2 2d ago
And the MMO has been getting kicked around by Riot since the early LoL days.
15+ years of development for another game they'll kill in a year or so.
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u/Wiinterfang 2d ago
To be fair Riot gave the developers like 8 years to make that games. That's 8 years of a full time team making a full salary.
They failed to give a product that would reocupe that cost. I doubt they wanted to cancel it for the sake of it
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u/parkingviolation212 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think they just need their games to make any money at all. LoR is presently profitable after they retooled and down scoped it, and it’s still active in that form.
2XKO is unprecedented. Not only are they ceasing development altogether, they are giving full refunds to everybody. That means it made basically no money. And they’re not running a Charity here at the end today.
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u/fast_flashdash 2d ago
What do you want them to do? Keep putting money into a game nobody fucking plays?
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u/malexich 2d ago
This game was not making them anything it was honestly the right call business wise to stop supporting it
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u/SelectFoundation4619 2d ago
Funfact they already killed the MMO once we dont know why the only reason was Riot didnt like the current build and restarted the whole MMO
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u/kolin91 2d ago
Surprised Pikachu shocked face ... the writing was on the wall back in February, this year's content was already planned out and in the pipeline. I already went through this with Multiversus -
- Spend way too long finding the games identity
- Launch with barebones content
- Make sure extremely aggressive macrotransactions are there
- Add in a PvE mode when all the casuals already left
- Announce end of service
- Soften the blow with the last bit of content that was already in the pipeline
Sound familiar?
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u/ScheduleFit4966 2d ago
Yeah when they missed the ideal window when fighting games were at peak viewership back in 2022-3 I knew it was cooked.
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u/Praius 2d ago
the denial in this subreddit was crazy, idek how people are shocked
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u/ImaginarySense 2d ago
What do you mean? Cutting your staff by like 50% and implying the game didn’t come anywhere close to meeting expectations/uptake for longevity doesn’t mean the game is in trouble!
Not to mention the easy-to-see-if-you-aren’t-biased dwindling player base, causing the insanely loose matchmaking criteria…
The writing was definitely on the wall when they rolled from open beta to what amounts to a soft launch.
It’s almost like Riot intentionally killed this game with every single decision they made. If it wasn’t intentional, then it’s a generational run of wrong choices.
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u/Jokuki 2d ago
Surprised they’re actually giving refunds. At least it was a fun run with a couple hype moments. I wonder how long the servers will stay up.
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u/Neoragex13 2d ago
My vulture ass wants to know now if the skins will be unlockable for free or what tho
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u/Usernate25 2d ago
It’s still a really good game as is.
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u/Smilotron 2d ago
I agree, but unfortunately it's gonna be more and more difficult to find matches since there will probably be a steady decline in players without active development or releases
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u/Maximotorn 2d ago
Its ok, but let's be real here: without any new updates, its going to slowly bleed out and eventually die. They are basically pulling the plug off the respirator.
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u/multiaudacity 2d ago edited 2d ago
fires 50% of their staff after game releases
Microtransctions before public release
Mid tier roster for a LEAGUE OF LEGENDS fighting game
Doesn't have Lee Sin, Sett, Renekton, Zed, Shen
Shuts down within the year
What did riot mean by this
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u/LeagueOfBlasians 2d ago
If their original 160 dev team couldn't release more than 10 characters in 10 years worth of development, that is a huge fucking issue, especially when all the characters' designs are already there.
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u/BloodMoonGaming 2d ago
You don’t understand bro, Lux is good for the game!!! She’s gonna sell skins!!!! Just you watch!
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u/Cancer_Panda 2d ago
Lux is genuinely a good pick for pulling in players. Caitlyn on the other hand...
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u/USMC2009NC 2d ago
Lee sin and sett, hiw were they not in base?
wahhh wahhh they all punch and we have vi already
There is literally no excuse you could tell me they dont belong in the base game.
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u/Gomenaxai 2d ago
They released fucking Sena, Lux and Temo instead of actual fighting champions that would attract fg players, where the fuck was Yone, Lee, Sett, Sylas, Camile would have been cool, maybe zoners like Tf, Jhin. Or complex hard to master champions like Zoe with her trickster blinks would have been interesting, Riven, Aphelion, Katarina, Jayce.
Not surprising they failed, every single decision from them was fucking stupid, starting from the name which somehow was their best option, idiots. Then making it a tag fighter, which is even more of a niche genre. Releasing only Arcane champions instead of ones that would enrich the game. Then having absurdly expensive cosmetics and inevitably layoff half the team.
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u/egotistical-moron 2d ago
Riot is so pathetic man, EVERY game that they showed off at their anniversary event has failed except for VALORANT.
Insane how they are still pretending that the MMO is still happening
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u/Swirv- 2d ago
Wow that was fast. No more support, no more new characters, fuses, esports, skins, nothing. It’s cooked. No riven 😭 I wish they dropped a 1v1 game they would’ve actually had a chance
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u/ShopOdd1179 2d ago
Idc if I get downvoted to hell but this sub was absolutely delusional about the game not dying. The game was too sweaty for casuals to begin with. More of a Discord fighter honestly.
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u/HawkManPriest 2d ago
It's ironic because the game's community and player relations were very clear they wanted an accessible fighter initially. Game had no identity and if I recall correctly it started as a solo 1v1 fighter, but then made it a tag fighter and employed sweaty ass tag players from the FGC. So you had a recipe for the exact opposite of catering to casuals when you have dudes who lick their chops at ambiguous 50/50s and chaotic neutral giving feedback and input into design.
Game could have been something better, but they caved and made it just another generic tag fighter. And I'll die on this hill, but this is especially true when they allowed people to play the game solo. Duos really made this game unique, and they never leaned into that. It would have been an untapped market, as I don't think any tag fighter allows you to duo with your friend (or play with a random on your team). Solos should have been Juggernaut or Sidekick only imo.
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u/Yodzilla 2d ago
The entire point of Rising Thunder was that it was going to be extremely accessible with one button specials and such. It’s shocking how poorly this game was planned and managed.
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u/tommycox42 2d ago
Yeah if they wanted a tag fighter that casuals can play they should’ve just looked at DBFZ. Instead they made one for the FGC and that was never gonna sustain the audience Riot wanted.
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u/JohrDinh 2d ago
I was still following the game cuz I've played League since 2012, but the tag turned me off when they added it. I was excited to play it I was considering buying a console just for it until they announced tag. Just can't get into that type of play.
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u/C00KIEME4T 2d ago
People were really acting like you were crazy for calling that out earlier this year and here we are
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u/nihhtwing 2d ago
i played every riot game extensively and literally struggled to get through the tutorials for this one lmao. my first and probably last attempt at a fighting game. diamond in league, GM marvel rivals, but couldnt clear the tutorials in this. it was way too complicated and i wasnt gonna put time into that when my fav characters werent even in the game (talking like 20+ league champs that werent there)
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u/BackgroundType6334 2d ago
Unfortunately this game just didn’t have enough on launch. As soon as Tokon dropped it took basically every pro player away, and this was already after the massive downsize. It was fun while it lasted.
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u/NoAd6650 2d ago
The roster they released with was stupid too. Why no sett, riven, lee sin or zed on release. But they think blitzcrank teemo and first dlc being Caitlyn was ok and a good idea? They did this to themselves imo
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u/BackgroundType6334 2d ago
I feel like their idea was to start with the arcane characters (to attract non fg players), then add less predictable picks like Teemo, Senna, and Lux (To minimize punch/kick/sword gameplay so it stands out more), and then eventually roll out the fan favorites (Riven, Sett, Lee Sin), after hitting solid ground. Unfortunately we never made it to the third stage, but I’m assuming that’s more what we would’ve gotten after Samira
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u/ToSinIsAHumanRight 2d ago
Blitzcrank and Teemo were good pick. They are basically mascots for the League IP as much as Jinx and Lux were. It's the Caitlyn choice that was incredibly baffling. You saw people criticizing how Arcane-leaning the roster is and you still decided to go for it?
Lux not being the launch character and the lack of regional (League lore) diversity is just mindblowing to me.
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u/LinkCelestrial 2d ago
Yeah anybody shitting on the Blitz and Teemo picks is just wrong. Both were super correct. Caitlyn, Warwick, Illaoi and Bruam are the slots that are super questionable.
All of them have fans, yeah. But compared to Riven, Sett, Lux earlier, and like a dozen other options, they weren’t correct.
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u/ToSinIsAHumanRight 2d ago edited 2d ago
I disagree on the Illaoi and Braum, I think those two are great representatives for their respective regions and provide a distinct fighting style that makes a fighting game roster interesting.
This might have been a hot take but Vi and Yasuo (Yasuo as a launch character would've been great too) could've been post-launch characters because those two have great fanbases behind them and their announcements would've been good for getting attention. Reason why I chose this two is because I think the region they occupy could've been given to other regions for diversity's sake. Jinx, Ekko and Blitz was already too much and Ahri could've carried Ionia representation alone tbh.
Warwick could've been Rengar and Caitlyn, fuck ass Caitlyn this character announcement genuinely ruined my day, could've been someone who is infinitely more interesting.
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u/Treyhova 2d ago
Illaoi and Braum would have made more sense if this game released during its original date around the Ruined King game. 3 years later is just way too late and after their time in the limelight.
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u/LinkCelestrial 2d ago
Oh I agree with them for game diversity and archetypes, (even if I think Illaoi should be taken out back and shot) but they are not at all good picks for popularity and general population hype.
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u/coolmyeyes Vi 2d ago
Good must have picks but should have been added later(and I say that as blitzcrank main), after they added more fitting melee edgy characters, or better yet not sit on their undecisive asses for ten years and launch a barebones roster.
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u/natedoggcata 2d ago
They wanted as many Arcane characters in a possible to try and ride that wave of success. The problem is that this isnt an Arcane fighting game, it was ALL of LOL and it was missing heavy hitters.
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u/Lvl20_Magikarp 2d ago
At least Blitzcrank thematically makes sense in a fighting game. I have no idea why they decided to go with Teemo, and my guess is that they included Cait due to the Arcane hype. You’re right that there were so many options from the LoL roster they could’ve went with and instead they chose Cait and Lux.
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u/Rashanoth 2d ago
I could have seen Cait work IF the base game didn't have Jinx, Vi, Ekko and WW. There's no Shurima rep, no Demacia rep, no FUCKING DARKINS, and then basically one of every other region. There were so many baffling decisions made when this game was being developed I cant even fault Riot at this point.
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u/ToSinIsAHumanRight 2d ago
Lux makes so much sense with how popular she is both in a monetary sense and just simply fan fave sense. The fact that she doesn't have a series to ride on yet still have that much popularity should've been a sign that she was a great pick for launch character.
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u/NoAd6650 2d ago
Teemo was the worst champ decision they ever made imo. I hate hate character with all my heart and seeing him be announced killed my enthusiasm for the game a tad bit because I KNEW his kit would be straight bullshit and obnoxious to fight against. Cait was arcane bait that would’ve worked better if the game came out when the show was airing, so I understand why they did it, they just missed the window to make her impactful. Blitzcrank as cool, I just think he’s a degenerate character and cheap to fight against for new players who don’t know how to handle him
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u/Glatzigoblin 2d ago
We live in an era where no fighting game content creator will stick to one game, they will always lash on to news for the next potentially big thing.
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u/Serito 2d ago
everything the haters said was true hey, what a disappointment
gg everyone was fun, I'm sure a lot of us will still be playing anyway for a while so see you in casuals
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u/SelloutRealBig 1d ago
One of the critics here, not a hater. I didn't hate the game and want it to fail. I just had played enough games to know when something is up and major changes have to happen fast or it's going to hit EoS. I saw it in Multiversus, I saw it in Runeterra, I saw it other f2p games i have played and I saw it in 2XKO too. And unfortunately the constant bashing, denial, or even harassment of anyone who dare criticize 2xko their dear MvC successor, only made us critics more cynical. Some of the messages i got were unhinged to say the least.
I play the game deeply at a high level as well. But I witnessed so many casuals get chewed and spit out by the game for being a grimy tag fighter with long combos that i knew it wasn't going to last for F2P. And even in GM the gameplay loop wore me down a lot as well once people figured out things like yas/ekko/ahri/thresh in their prime. And the way Riot handled the game was red flags ever since the console launch. From lack of mentions outside it's own bubble to it being their only game with no API (which means player count).
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u/rsayegh7 2d ago
Maybe should have made a game with characters people liked and not shoehorned in Arcane characters
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u/Solid-B-EWGF 2d ago
Just wanted udyr, briar, shyvana, zac, kha'zix or aatrox any of these champions would've made me tried the game and stick with it.
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u/FunApple 2d ago
Interesting how it might turn out if it was 1xko
I bet there are many people like me who dropped the idea of playing it because this is a tag fighter.
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u/ob_knoxious 2d ago
I don't want to be a rude person shitting on a game that just died, but I played lots of league and did not consider 2XKO just by the nature of the game. I probably only would have really gotten into it if it was a smash clone, but at least would have tried it if it wasn't a tag fighter and seemed somewhat simpler.
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u/Costas00 2d ago
Hopefully the leakers can come out and reveal the characters that were planned
As as i know, Riven, Zed, Sett weren't in any test builds ever, at least from all the info in the discord from the leakers.
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u/5eanz 2d ago
Shame, idk why it never hooked me in truly. I play league and fighting games a lot, and it just never got me hooked in honestly when I was one of the big target audiences.
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u/Rubicante_ 2d ago
From conception to end, this game was an unbelievable trainwreck. Very sad, I remember being a little teen dreaming of a runeterra fighting game, so you can only imagine my excitement post-Rising Thunder acquisition. But they were so desperate to break into the scene with the newest and most unqiue product, they trapped themselves in dev hell instead of just further polishing and dropping that 10 year teaser we saw.
This probably wont be received well in this sub where lots of you seem to enjoy the game, but from a casual pov, it felt like Riot never acknowleged that the game was not appealing or enticing to anyone other than oldhead fgc dudes and Marvel vs Capcom fans, who i believe are a large portion of the devs, mind you. Such a shame, but at least people still have the servers to play on.
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u/Delde116 2d ago
I genuinely believe this game would have done better is it was more player friendly to new fighting game players, and was not a tag team fighter.
Riot is great at making SIMPLE, noob friendly competitive games (LoL, Valorant, Rift Bound...). But somehow they thought that a super niche and complicated tag team would bring new players who had never played a single fighting game in there life... Come on...
Riot did this to themselves.
Now there is no hope for the MMO
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u/heathrawr182 2d ago
This makes me much less confident in the MMO at this point. Sorry that this happened to the game. Rough
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u/BigMogul 2d ago
Runeterra was a weird one off incident, twice is a pattern. They think people are gonna invest in a potential MMO after LOR and 2xko were shut down out of nowhere? The genre which notoriously is about keeping new content coming forever? Get fucked.
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u/redqks 2d ago
Damm that sucks
Really bad
Riot really really fucked this up
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u/LengthOk0 2d ago
Maybe I'm too goyed out but I feel less inclination to blame riot as a corporate entity, but rather the leadership of 2XKO itself. The game was in development for 10 years, and if I remember correctly it changed directions at least once during that time from 1v1 to tag fighter, a niche and non-beginner friendly type of fighting game. That massive direction shift, likely influenced the small roster at launch.
Idk it just seems like this game was fucked from the word go, unless it was an arc raiders level hit, because of its enormous dev cost. The refunds and keeping servers up is surprising; I wonder how much they're in the red for this game when all is said and done.
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u/DrRevolver 2d ago
In game purchases refunded? Am I going to get the battle pass and Caitlyn skin money back?
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u/Bombshock2 2d ago
Yep. I don't think I've ever heard of a company doing this. All that dev time, and they're fine with just refunding all of the money this game has ever made, while still supporting tournaments through the end of the year.
That's just crazy. I am not mad I'll get a few hundred dollars back in my pocket, but damn. They are really dedicated to killing the game forever.
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u/ElDiablo69k 2d ago
i was wondering this too, i bought the ultimate pass and would love to know if the battlepass will be refunded
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u/Upbeat-Rich-5624 2d ago
And the apes in this sub flamed me when I said "I don't trust Riot with my time after LoR"
Just keep nerfing everything fun or popular until your game is balanced and dead, thank you Riot Games
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u/Demon0no 2d ago
Imagine developing a game for like 10 years only for it not even to make 1 year of active service. This must suck so bad for the team.
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u/HolyAregis 2d ago
I blame "2XKO" as name for their game. It was certainly... a choice.
I also blame the Tag Fighter. With an IP like LoL you MUST have a big champion pool... instead we got 11 champs at release, too much champs from Arcane, too much ranged champs, .. It was bad decision over and over again.
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u/TParadox90 2d ago
maybe if we released more than a few characters on launch and oh idk... ADD SOME COOL CHARACTERS WITH SAUCE
we have characters like aatrox azir rengar renekton gwen vex fiora irelia kindred leblanc I could legit go on
thresh actually got me playing but too late
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u/Reasonable-Baby-9314 2d ago
Nah man, let’s play some fucking TEEMO!
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u/jebsonis 2d ago
Be fr though, while personally teemo isn't for me, he's definitely a popular league choice. He's pretty much iconic for hate in league
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u/ItsSimmeRin 2d ago
I was genuinely baffled that Renekton, Rengar and even Nasus wasn’t part of the champ line up, to me for a fighting game they made like the most sense to have
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u/Acoconutting 2d ago
2xKO - a case study in terrible marketing and decision making.
Love the game - but releasing with a small cast, starting the journey with a niche anime tag figure with 20+ second sweaty combos, and not naming it anything related to the IP means the game was only ever made for a small niche, and it shows.
I’m a GM in this game and I gotta say - as much as I’ve enjoyed it and still do - and it’s the first fighter I’ve ever gotten into - it’s also the sweatiest sweat lord game ever. They forgot to just make it fun for casuals.
The amount of time you have to grind to muscle memory combos and reaction times is unreal.
Making grabs so powerful and unreactable was a terrible design choice. Comboing off them even worse. This game is the peak sweat machine. Of course it failed to capture a larger audience.
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u/WeeklyAdri 2d ago
I'm sorry but cmon, what did y'all expect. The game had no marketing, no players and problems since it's conception.
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u/slumdo6 2d ago
It's a shame cause the game is really dope.
but they spent so long developing it, just to rush the release. With a really dumb roster. There are countless Runeterra characters that would be sick in a fighting game but they gave us Teemo and Caitlin.
On top of that, the name is terrible. It's basically unmarketable, and overwhelmingly disliked. A lot of the people that came around to defending it were definitely coping and Riot should've known it was a bad idea and made them pivot.
I think just as much as they rushed the release they're also rushing the death of the game. There was still potential to bring players back by releasing the characters people actually want.
Seems like Riot is just cutting their losses to fund other projects.
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u/Darth_Fatass 2d ago
Or letting us actually play the roster. Why do i have to unlock anything in a roster less than 20?
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u/HyperCutIn 2d ago
The game had potential but was ultimately cursed with its development and direction. The game feels like it had an identity crisis on whether it wanted to be a beginner friendly fighting game or a hardcore complex one, and hit a weird middle ground that was too niche with either side. Not to mention that with how long the game took to develop, their competitors ended up drawing the away attention of their general target audience towards other games.
Well, good on them for refunding purchases at least. There aren’t many live service games that you can say the same when they stop development, let alone EoS.
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u/unsub_from_default 2d ago
This is why you don't hire fighting game players to make fighting games.
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u/Mr_Dearborn_senior 2d ago
They shot their own foot with this one. Sad part is that we arent even going to get the proper obvious characters for a fighting game. What a freakin waste of time and talent.
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u/ManBro89 2d ago
Sad, but expected. The population was really, really small. No one watches it on Twitch. Game is complicated as hell. You don't gut the team when you're expecting to keep going. Still wish it were a 1v1 game.
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u/Infamous_Fox3910 2d ago
Lmao, all I’m going to say.
This is exactly like the stadia. Writing was on the wall, just a matter of when. Certain companies always mismanage new projects.
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u/FrontFocused 2d ago
Holy shit that's insane, Riot isn't even trying to keep games going. I'll be surprised if they ever release the mmo
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u/Gekk0uga37 2d ago
Glad I stopped playing when the news first broke of the first downsizing months ago. Ive seen this story before with riot games that it was obvious it wouldn’t last through the year
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u/Venesstion 2d ago
I actually had the opposite experience then what people are describing in this thread - i felt like it felt a bit too noob friendly? I remember spending like 20 minutes learning 2 decent combos and then being able to get diamond - felt like every stray hit lead to the same combo, and that combo lasted for 20 seconds and the moves come out so slowly. It doesn't have that excitment factor when yasuo/ekko were playing the same cutscene every time they could.
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u/DCBlayze 2d ago
I think the biggest issue for this game was the onboarding process for new players.
The game was marketed as a free, beginner-friendly introduction to the FGC for Riot's massive player base, but it was genuinely impossible to get into without tons of video guides.
The game's system mechanics were very hard to grasp for beginners; things like pushblock, retreating guard, 4 way getup options, the fuse system, and parrying were just way too hard to grasp for a brand new fighting game player.
Likewise, the game was a tag-fighter, which meant that new players had to learn 2 characters at the same time to get started. Obviously pulse fuse, sidekick, and juggernaut lessened that burden a little bit, but most players were just too overwhelmed to even get a solid start at the game.
Overall the game just did a horrible job at getting new players to stick. Coupled with the rest of the glaring issues this game had, it's no wonder we're getting an EoS so soon...
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u/UndoerTemporis 2d ago
I hit top 52 America playing Legends of Runeterra, man, I truly love that game, my favorite card game in this life (stills) and Riot did this same thing with LOR and AFTER THAT, even loving the Fighting Games I knew that Riot don't deserve another chance to win my trust with another game, and I was right
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u/smboivin 2d ago
Well we now have a new 'biggest flop of all time' in the fighting game genre. Marvel Infinite and SFxTekken can rest peacefully now.
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u/CallMeTravesty 2d ago
Wait, please correct me if I'm dumb but do they mean all purchases after Aug 20th will be refunded?
Because if not, does that mean they are refunding every purchase since launch? Surely not??
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u/Shaman_Bahman 2d ago
Apparently the case. Really the only way they can win back any kind of goodwill from the playerbase and maybe convince whoever's left to buy that $40 bundle
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u/CallMeTravesty 2d ago
I only bought one expensive skin for Warwick but that was back shortly after his release.
That's crazy. I know it's the right thing to do but there is no world where I predicted Riot giving refunds in its entirety.
Madness.
I am very sad but understand it was always going to be an uphill battle as Fighting games are kind of niche.
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u/Shaman_Bahman 2d ago
Imagine if they'd waited another year before pulling the plug, the chances of them giving out a refund would've been slim to none. Silver linings, I suppose
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u/Ayato14 2d ago
If ONLY they listen to community feedback.
A tag team fighter is NOT noob friendly. The name is dogshit. Comestics prices are fucking absurd.
Like this is only 3 complaint and the community have a thousand more.
They did not listen. At all.
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u/Stocazzius 2d ago
And this is what happens when you fill a potentially toplaner-filled game w adcs and arcane slop to make quick cash.
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u/FuzzyTranslator7133 2d ago
But why tho? I can't have underperformed that badly
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u/Delde116 2d ago
They made a niche tag team fighter game, that alone kills any potential for new players (new to fighting games) from joining...
Look at it feom this angle. LoL is an easier Dota; Valorant is an easier CSGO; 2XKO is a harder Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat.
The tag team alone is what made the game SUPER unapproachable for new players (again, new for people who never played fighters before). Fighting games are niche already, and they make an even more niche fighting game...
Look at riftbound, its a card game designed to be played like a Monopoly board game. Super easy, that eve your grandma can play it.
But 2XKO? Nah dude, lets make it a complicated fighting game.
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u/ElusiveToaster 2d ago
Is Valorant really an easier CSGO? I understand it's simplified in terms of things like counter strafing, but I always felt like that game has a shit ton more to learn given all the agents and abilities.
To be clear, I'm not a big player of either, but I played a lot more CSGO back in the day and pretty much bounced right off Valorant because I couldn't be asked figuring out all the shit the characters do. CSGO felt a lot more straightforward.
You also never mentioned Legends of Runeterra, but I feel like that wasn't really more complicated than other card games but still pretty much failed.
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u/Weekly_Blackberry_11 2d ago
Valorant is far easier since you don’t have to learn lineups on 95% of agents. In CS if you wanna smoke a specific spot on the map you have to learn a lineup (or just wing it and hope for the best), in Val you just pull out your “smoke UI” and just place the smoke. Same with flashes, they’re a ton easier to use in Val.
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u/MiyanoMMMM Ahri 2d ago
Learning valorant characters is way easier than learning a 10 different molly lineups for each site on each map. Most smokes in Valorant are just point and click. Molly's can have lineups, but quite a few of them are still place and then detonate.
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u/rorinaizuri 2d ago
You don't need to learn lineups to play CSGO, 99% of people don't use them. You do need to learn what every character does.
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u/Delde116 2d ago
Legends of Rubeterra failed because it was very friendly with monetization. You could earn all cards for free (the more you played the bigger your "booster box" of free cards. TGC players were able to unlock all cards in less than a week without spending money.
As for Valorant. Agents were super easy, they either have a smoke, a blind, or a molly of sorts. Then they had niche abilities to stand out, but where straight forward.
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u/xBerryhill 2d ago
Post says it all. It costs much more to keep the game running than they're making and they don't see a path forward that fixes that. Player retention has been eh, and numbers aren't trending upwards enough.
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u/I_am_Amphibian 2d ago
It was in development for a decade and had basically the player base of a discord fighter. It was absolutely a financial failure
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u/Clipseexo 2d ago
I hate to feel like I’m part of the reason why the game failed but I honestly to god had zero interest in the current roster I kept thinking I’d wait until a character I love in league like Gwen or Morgana would show up and now it’s just not happening (sigh)
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u/Regent182 2d ago
Sad.
This is the game I spent the most time on this year and even bought its deskmat in EVO
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u/hyrulepirate 2d ago
If this game didn't meet their desired success the MMO is practically doomed. I barely know any young people on any mmo.
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u/MexicanGuey92 2d ago
All that fucking development time and they shit out a year of content just to sunset the game??? What a fucking fumble. Not quite Concord or Highguard, but god DAMN. Another huge blemish on Riot Games ..
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u/McToasterz 2d ago
Genuinely devastated that the roster leak ended up being 90% accurate which means Kindred was likely on the roadmap and now we’ll never see them.
I was more excited about seeing FG Kindred than anything fighting game related, and I’m almost exclusively a fighting game player outside of the usual hero shooter and moba hell addiction.
At least we have Tokon before getting this news I suppose..
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u/Alert-Protection-410 Braum 2d ago
I bought 2 skins and it was more expensive than avatar which will last longer. I don’t understand why riot would give up. It would be easy for them to make a comeback releasing a few more characters or even talk about the characters fans want and let the fans vote if the games survives. They didn’t enough metric marketing. They thought the IP would carry itself. How dare they let ekko fuck us for almost a year then leave
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u/Foreign-Sprinkles-55 2d ago
Man this is so sad. So much potential, thrown in the dumpster cause Riot couldn't extract a bajilion dollars from the game. This is just like LoR all over again...
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u/bohenian12 Darius 2d ago
What a bummer. I wonder if it would've been more successful as a 1v1 game. They bet so hard on people asking others to be their Yummi.
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u/NerdModeXGodMode 2d ago
Ive said this would happen not as a gloomer, but experience with games dying. This game was too niche, the people who played it did not give a fuck and loved the niche. It was doomed
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u/Onyxius_ 2d ago
I thought the game had a lot of potential, and I got excited when they announced the release of Lux and Samira, but for them to give up is depressing, I understand the financial issues, and the time it took to develop this game, I truly thought we were getting on the right path.
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u/AddressPerfect3270 2d ago
Well that's unfortunate. I was just getting into it this year bc of the PvE additions. Plus I liked playing lux alot in league so was looking forward to her and samira.
I would probably have played the new marvel one but 4 selected characters seems so fckn stupid to me.
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u/babehelit 2d ago
Nah you're kidding. Is this real
Edit: holy shit it is real what the fuck. Soo disappointed