Riot Games has confirmed that it is laying off 80 2XKO developers fewer than three weeks after the fighting game’s console launch. For the time being, a smaller team will work on “key improvements to the game,” and its 2026 Competitive Series will go on as planned.
2XKO is a League of Legends spin-off fighting game that has been in the works at Riot Games for about a decade. It’s a tag-team fighter built for co-op play. After years of behind-closed-doors testing and several betas, it entered early access on PC in November 2025. On January 20 of this year, 2XKO launched on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Unfortunately, a new blog post from Riot Games indicated that 2XKO hasn’t been as successful as the studio hoped for. “As we expanded from PC to console, we saw consistent trends in how players were engaging with 2XKO,” executive producer Tom Cannon wrote. “The game has resonated with a passionate core audience, but overall momentum hasn’t reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term.”
Game Developer confirmed that around 80 employees at Riot Games were impacted by this, while Riot’s blog post says those affected will get six months of notice pay and severance if they aren’t placed elsewhere in the company. One developer on Bluesky shared that they had been unceremoniously laid off with just 30 minutes of notice after working on 2XKO for a decade and spending 12 years at Riot.
Cannon didn’t go into too many specifics on the game’s future in the blog post, but said 2XKO’s developers are working on “key improvements” that the community have requested. Riot Games also plans to uphold its partnerships with FGC tournament organizers and keep 2XKO’s 2026 Competitive Series running.
