Riot Games Ends Development of Fighting Game 2XKO, Refunds All Player Spending
Riot Games will stop active development of its fighting game 2XKO at the end of 2026, the studio announced on August 20, citing player numbers too low to sustain ongoing work. The game's servers will stay online beyond 2026, and offline play will remain fully functional.
2XKO, a free-to-play 2v2 tag-team fighting game available on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5, launched in full in January 2026. The game drew its roster from League of Legends and Arcane, reimagining those characters with movesets built for a fighting game. Despite that lineage, Riot said the player base after launch was not large enough to justify continued development.
The wind-down comes with an unusually generous set of terms for existing players. Riot will unlock all characters immediately, bundle "most" cosmetic items, and refund all money spent on 2XKO on or before August 20, according to the studio's announcement. Any content players already own is theirs to keep.
Two new characters, Lux and Samira, will still be added through the remainder of the year, alongside other content. A final bug-fix patch is scheduled for December 2026. Avatar and player profile items will become unlockable for in-game Credits in patch 1.3.1, set for release in September, when all gameplay content will also be unlocked.
Refunds are already in motion. Riot said most should be distributed within two weeks of the announcement, with PC refunds targeted to finish by November 2026. Players must submit refund requests by December 7, 2026; after that, Riot will no longer issue them, with possible regional exceptions. The 2XKO team will remain active through the end of 2026 even as development winds down.
For fans, the practical outcome is a game that keeps working but stops growing. Servers stay on, fights stay live, and every character becomes free. What ends is the roadmap: no new champions, no new stages, no seasons after the current plan wraps. Players who spent money get it back, and everything they unlocked stays in their library.
2XKO's brief arc included an early-access period with Season 0 running through late 2025, followed by the full January launch. The studio had previously outlined a plan for five seasons per year, each bringing a new champion. That plan now runs to December and no further.
