I’m either a psychic or I cursed 2XKO to fail: Riot’s fighter could be on its last leg at CEO 2026

I’ve been saying that 2XKO is a dead game for a while. I know we all love to say that in the esports industry, but it just felt like a matter of time.

While my colleague has argued with me that Riot’s 2v2 fighter will always have a place in the FGC, I’ve always felt it would have until 2027 before it had to wrap it up. The core team of devs behind 2XKO was very knowledgeable of the FGC, but this almost backfired. The game is much too high-level and confusing for anyone who isn’t planning to be a try-hard grinder or pro player.

Meanwhile, Riot as a whole has no idea what the FGC is, and thought that they’d all be clamoring over themselves to buy super expensive skins. They didn’t, and Riot claimed 2XKO wasn’t big enough to justify maintaining such a large dev team, resulting in massive layoffs.

I think it really believed it could break out of the FGC niche because it had League of Legends champions. It hasn’t, and I speculated that Riot wouldn’t find 2XKO worthy of dumping money into in the near future. I figured it would maybe survive as an esports scene on its own, kept alive by passionate players despite Riot’s eventual decision to back away from the FGC.

But it looks like I was getting too soft. I should have stuck to my original beliefs. I should have kept being a hater as god intended.

At the end of July, Riot Games had an internal data leak after confidential developer files were left visible due to AI tool logs and other autonomous AI assistants f***ed up. One of the more interesting leaks included the message: “lion/dev-main is effectively a dead game, so aligning its client spec will never be actioned.”

This was met with widespread speculation and backlash from the gaming community at large, but many believed it was in reference to 2XKO, which was originally called Project L.

I was not about to say “I told you so” based on a leak that couldn’t be fully proven or deciphered. But it did seem to align with my original feelings that 2XKO was rapidly losing its player base. So much so that Riot allegedly felt it was “dead” and didn’t want to keep dropping resources into it.

Some in the FGC argued back that the registration numbers seemed healthy. Plenty of people signed up at Evo France and Evo Las Vegas this year. But again, the game only appeals to these try-hards and not the general gaming public. There were 1,080 registrations at Evo Las Vegas, enough to earn it a spot on the main stage. But it didn’t have much competition (except for a rigged one).

However, it looks like even the competitive fighting game players are over it, just months later. Leading up to CEO 2026, the FGC has been closely monitoring the registration count to see whether 2XKO is truly as “dead” as the leaks claim.

While 2XKO made it into the CEO Ring, it’s in 6th place after anime title Guilty Gear -Strive-, and newcomers Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls and Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game. You can say that it’s due to novelty, sure, but that excuse didn’t stop Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 from getting registrations.

Even someone attempting to sorta stand up for 2XKO (or at least explain why this placement is obvious) made the game look terrible in the process.

“Yes, super embarrassing a game based on League of Legends isn’t performing better than our most legendary fighting game franchises, and two games that literally just came out. Ya’ll weird af,” they wrote.

But, like… Yeah, that’s the issue. 2XKO thought coasting by on League of Legends champions was enough to create a built-in following. It didn’t. And the gameplay doesn’t hold people’s interest, especially as new games come out that seem to appeal more to competitive players.

The FGC is currently complaining about hidden registration, but the tournament organizers who choose to do this explained that they are doing so because the FGC can sometimes see a lack of registration, assume something is dead, and then not register either. Well, we can all see 2XKO floundering, and I think that may cause many players and fans to move on. To sorta look away from the struggle and find another scene.

2XKO is losing interest, and fast. This doesn’t mean I think Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has a chance of surviving in this cutthroat scene, either. It may not, based on beta reactions (although I enjoyed it). All I’m saying is that 2XKO isn’t a mainstay. It’s not going to last.

Enjoy the chaos while you can.