Fighting game to remain free to download and play after development ends.
Riot Games will end active development on free-to-play fighting game 2XKO in December, the company announced. Servers will remain online following the end of development, while the remaining content roadmap includes two new champions—Lux and Samira—as well as feature improvements and a final bug fix patch. After December, the game will remain free to download and play.
2XKO first launched in Early Access for PC on October 7, 2025, followed by a full launch across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC on January 20, 2026.
Here is the full message from Riot Games on the game’s end of development:
The End of 2XKO‘s Active Development
Hey all. We have an update to share on the future of 2XKO.
2XKO‘s active development will conclude at the end of 2026. Over the last few months, we’ve been monitoring 2XKO‘s trajectory closely, and what we’ve seen is painting a clear, consistent picture: while a lot of you jumped in to try the game and there’s an incredible community that plays every day, we haven’t seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability.
Servers will remain on beyond 2026, and 2XKO will be playable on all platforms. Through the rest of 2026, we’ll be introducing content, feature improvements, and two new champions (Lux and Samira), with the intent to deliver our final bug fix patch in December of this year. After that, servers will remain on to support online play. Offline play is unaffected. We’ll give advanced notice if any of that changes.
We’re unlocking all champs. We’re also bundling most cosmetic items, and refunding all money spent in 2XKO on or before August 20. Any content owned is yours to keep. Avatar and player profile items will be unlockable for Credits. This will happen in patch 1.3.1 (September). More info on this below.
Our goal now is to do right by the players who have invested in us so far and want to continue playing 2XKO, as well as the Rioters who have poured everything into delivering on this dream. The rest of this post goes into detail on how we got here, what’s changing, and what’s still to come.
What Was Riot’s Goal with 2XKO?
Our dream was to build a game that the fighting game community would love to play with their friends. We wanted to be respectful of the incredible games that came before ours and bring Riot’s take on live service to a new set of hungry players.
Our approach was to tackle some of the issues that we knew the fighting game community struggled with by building more reliable netcode, making the ranked grind less lonely, committing to more frequent game updates, and more. While the genre progressed significantly in the last ten or so years, we believe 2X delivered on many of these promises.
On the business side, we hoped that by making the game free, we could make the genre more accessible and discoverable to new players, and that they could fall in love with fighting games in the same way we did. Ideally this would have happened over time, starting by earning the trust of lots of core fighting game players, and growing into a larger playerbase when more features and content came online. We also went into this project knowing from the start that free-to-play comes with a minimum player requirement to support these ambitions.
Early on, we saw pockets of the fighting game community fully embrace 2XKO, and we got proof that this approach was working at a small scale: players pushed the game to its limits in high-level play (and brought their non-fighting game friends to play with them); duos became a great way to mash buttons together; tournament organizers added the game to their weekly lineups; and players told us they just wanted more (champs, events, features, etc.).
While this is exactly what we wanted to see, it just wasn’t happening enough. Even within the genre, diehard tag fighter players loved 2XKO, but most other fighting game players struggled to find reasons to stick with the game.
Why End Active Development?
We evaluated the game’s overall performance—not just revenue, but retention, new players, and engagement—through 2026. We saw positive player reactions through the releases of Akali, Senna, Thresh, The Climb (PVE), and some amazing competitive events throughout the year. Even in these highlight moments, however, we saw no meaningful, sustained change in 2XKO‘s trajectory; only a fraction of what it would take to trend toward sustainability. Over time it became clear it would be impossible for us to continue actively developing the game as we are today.
In recent months, the team has continued to take bold swings while fully aware of 2XKO‘s challenges—but to attempt another year hoping for a way forward would have been an irresponsible choice for players and the dev team. To be super clear: we would have continued active development if we saw any viable future, but 2XKO costs us substantially more to operate than it brings in, and engagement has stayed relatively flat despite our larger updates.
So when we looked at all the options available (e.g., reducing team size, adjusting our patch schedules, changing our business model), we concluded that finishing the rest of our work-in-progress content and sunsetting active development was the best route forward for players and Rioters.
What’s Next?
As we mentioned above, we want to do right by the players who want to continue playing 2XKO, and deeply respect the love put into the game and the scene up to now. 2XKO remains online and playable, and we aren’t going anywhere yet. We’ve still got more content to show you through the end of this year, and we are truly grateful to everyone who has been a part of 2XKO‘s journey so far.
Here’s a quick look at the patches for the rest of 2026.
2026 Preview
or the rest of 2026, we’ll continue finishing up our work-in-progress content, fixing bugs, and making balance changes to get 2XKO into a state where we’ll be able to make a final bug fix pass in December.
August 20 (Today)
We’re disabling KO Points purchases:
In preparation for the upcoming 2XKO Ultimate Bundle and in-game refunds, we’re disabling the ability to purchase KO Points.
Physical prepaid cards will no longer be usable in 2XKO. Cards will still work for currencies in Riot’s other games.
Remaining KO Points can be spent in the rotating store before patch 1.3.1.
We’ll begin the process of refunding all purchases made prior to August 20:
For PC players, all KO Points and 2XKO Starter Edition purchases made prior to August 20 will be refunded to the payment method used to purchase them. We plan to have most refunds distributed in the next two weeks, and hope to be finished with all PC refunds by November 2026. We appreciate your patience as we process these.
For PlayStation and XBOX players, KO Points and 2XKO Starter Edition purchases made prior to August 20 will be refunded through the platform and provider used to purchase. PlayStation or XBOX customer support may reach out to confirm payment details in the coming weeks.
For players on the Japan or Korea server, we will conduct the refund process for KO Points in compliance with local law. Further details regarding the refund procedures will be provided in future announcements or individual notices.
Read more information about refunds in our Support FAQ.
September 8 – Patch 1.3.1
As announced at Evo 2026, Lux, the Lady of Luminosity, drops with patch 1.3.1. Lux is a shoto-inspired character with a simple kit, who harnesses the power of light to illuminate her enemies.
We’re adding a purchasable bundle of nearly all 2XKO cosmetic content for $39.99 / £33.99 / €39.99:
The 2XKO Ultimate Bundle launches in patch 1.3.1. It contains all skins, skin chromas, and taunts for every champion up to and including Lux, plus all currently-released finishers.
For those who want to pick up everything in 2XKO, this bundle packages most cosmetics into a single purchase.
We’re making many items available for Credits (earned currency):
Avatar items, select base champion chromas, stages, and player profile items will be unlockable for Credits.
The Credits limit will be uncapped from 12,000.
We’re removing some systems so we can support the long-term online experience:
Battle Passes, KO Points, Champion Tokens, seasons, and events will be removed.
We’re removing Ranked, and adjusting matchmaking to be streamlined within Casual lobbies:
Ranked lobbies will be disabled to ensure that we can matchmake within a single pool of players per server.
Casual lobbies will still be matchmade by skill, so you should still expect to see players around your skill level.
Private lobbies will be unaffected.
We’re unlocking most gameplay content for all players:
All champions will be unlocked for all players. Fuses will still be unlockable through tutorials.
We’re updating other parts of the game:
We’ll add voice chat and a large map to Private lobbies, which will allow up to 40 players in one Private lobby.
More information will be available in the 1.3.1 patch notes.
October – Patch 1.3.3
Launching in October, 2XKO‘s final champion is Samira, the Desert Rose. Samira is a bounty hunter who fights with bombastic flair, switching between her sword and dual pistols for maximum style.
We’ll also update the 2XKO Ultimate Bundle to include all remaining skins and cosmetics. Owners of the bundle will receive the added items automatically.
This will be the final major content patch for the game. More information will be available in the 1.3.3 patch notes.
(Optional) December – Patch 1.3.5
If required, this patch will mostly be focused on bug fixes, and it won’t introduce major new content.
From here, 2XKO servers remain online, and the game will still be available to download for free on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
2XKO Competitive Series
The Competitive Series is unchanged through 2026, and we’ll continue to support players and TOs. This includes prizing for all Major and Challenger events. The final Competitive Series event will take place in November. Beyond 2026, TOs can continue to run events featuring 2XKO using the Community Competition Guidelines, online or offline.
