Riot Games said 2XKO’s active development will end at the end of 2026, but the game will stay online after that and remain playable on all platforms. The company also said it will keep rolling out updates through the rest of the year, including two new champions, Lux and Samira.
That announcement lands now because Riot has set a clear finish line for the game’s live development while also trying to reassure players that 2XKO is not being shut down. Anyone who bought content in 2XKO on or before August 20 will be refunded, all champs are being unlocked, most cosmetic items are being bundled, and offline play is unaffected.
Riot said it evaluated 2XKO’s overall performance through 2026 by looking at revenue, retention, new players and engagement. The company said the game drew positive reactions as Akali, Senna, Thresh and The Climb arrived, and it also saw tournament organizers add the game to their weekly lineups. Even so, Riot said the response from diehard tag fighter players was stronger than from most other fighting game players, who struggled to find reasons to stick with it.
That is the friction inside the decision. Riot said 2XKO had an incredible community that plays every day, but it still had not seen enough players stay with the game to make the business sustainable. The question the company did not answer is how many players would have been enough, only that the line was not reached.
Riot said it will continue with content, feature improvements and two new champions through 2026, with avatar and player profile items becoming unlockable for Credits in patch 1.3.1 in September. It also intends to deliver its final bug fix patch in December 2026. After that, active development ends, but the servers stay up and the game remains available for anyone who wants to keep playing.
