I have found myself writing about the demise of 2XKO quite a bit, but this time, we have insight from Riot Games to back up what I’ve been saying for quite some time now: the expectations were insane.
According to Co-Founder Marc Merrill on the Lemonade Stand Podcast, Riot required numbers in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions of monthly users, for 2XKO to be considered sustainable for the long-term. This is due to how expensive 2XKO apparently was to develop as well as its cost structure.
Millions? As I’ve always said: Riot’s deep misunderstanding of the FGC was ultimately the reason 2XKO couldn’t make it more than a year.
In the past, I jokingly said that I “cursed” 2XKO by predicting its failure almost immediately upon the initial announcement. It felt far too complex and niche to appeal to even the majority of the FGC, let alone new players. Still, Riot kept pushing super expensive skins and attempting to appeal to mainstream gamers with Chipotle skits.
Once Riot laid off tons of developers, it became clear that Riot was hoping for a lot more. At the time, I wrote that Riot was hoping 2XKO would spread beyond the FGC since it had League of Legends champions. However, it had failed to even get a huge following within the FGC. And the FGC does not buy expensive skins, which seemed to be the main revenue source.
At this point, I argued with other colleagues in the FGC space that Riot would probably have no reason to essentially donate money to the 2XKO esports scene beyond 2027. This is the publisher behind VALORANT and League of Legends; they expected a lot more. If there’s no money involved, why bother?
But I’m clearly not the only one who has been feeling this way since the layoffs.
“After 1.0, when they laid off half the staff, it became clear to the community that whatever goals they had in mind, whatever targets they had for money on skins and player rate, were way too high,” 2XKO commentator Corey “Nitten” Salva told me. “Slowly losing players just happens. The player count drops and plateaus at some point. So this was a big signal: it was weird that they were doing all this so quickly. It was like a month or two after.
“The numbers had to be so far off.”
Now we have proof: they were. Hoping for millions of active players a month is extreme for a fighting game. Street Fighter 6 averaged about 17,000 players over the past 30 months, and it’s the biggest fighting game scene we have. 2XKO was a 2v2 fighter that had a much more niche space in fighting games, so it was never going to even come close to the player goals Riot had for it.
It was basically set up to fail.
bro riot is inane
It feels like mark marrell has the company in a chokehold where if their game doesn’t make 1 billion dollars instantly he shuts it down
No community building, no thought of making a beautiful game just pure profit or die https://t.co/k4rHUz4aRf— ludwig (@LudwigAhgren) August 20, 2026
Grassroots eSports event organizer Hieu “hieule8” Van Le told me that he sensed Riot’s disdain for 2XKO quite early on. I think they realized there was just no way the game would ever be worth the money and effort. This could be due to the fact that Riot hired so many people to push the game out, something they hadn’t done for VALORANT, noted hieule8.
This big mistake ultimately forced Riot to reduce esports support early on, offering little at their demo booth at Evo and communicating little with co-streamers. To hieule8, it didn’t seem like Riot was attempting to really get involved with the FGC at that point. It didn’t understand it.
“The money it took to produce 2XKO compared to other games, I don’t think they saw the money back,” hieule8 said. “The community didn’t grow into those numbers. I don’t think the registration numbers met what they expected.”
Despite Riot’s unrealistic player count and skin sale expectations, the 2XKO competitive scene had grown quite dedicated. Nitten even notoriously got a tattoo of the game. He told me he had no regrets at all. I think it was a success as far as fighting games go.
But Riot wanted League of Legends numbers.
I’ll get roasted for this for sure, but I’m still happy I did this. 2X is so special, and it created many genuine friendships I will carry on for years to come. Gave me a new passion to pursue, and helped me through some dark times.
Long live 2XKO. https://t.co/RT9vIkARaM
— ONi | Nitten (@TheNitten) August 20, 2026
2XKO has already fallen out of the mainstage spots for Evo France as the hype starts to dwindle. Without any support from Riot, some competitors have already given up. But Frosty Faustings will have 2XKO in the 2027 lineup, which is bittersweet: it was the first event to have a big 2XKO tournament back in February 2026.
“One thing that’s important with 2X is […] it resonated with some players, but not nearly enough players in order to justify the type of live service, long-tail approach that the game was designed to do,” Merrill said.
