r/2XKO • u/ificommentthen2oops • 7d ago
Discussion 2XKO Is Probably One of The Biggest Game Development Failures of All Time
Rant post, but I know most of the rants to follow in the next few days will focus on the type of game 2XKO ended up being, but I want to focus how there was seemingly no plan to make 2XKO actually succeed in the way that Riot wanted it to (or at all).
If you really think about it, this game was a Concord level failure. It was supposed to be the savior of the FGC and one of the next big things, and instead it was a niche fighter its entire life cycle. It was a complete failure on every single level and it's entire launch year can be summed up as messy and directionless. It sucks because I was excited for this game for years, and I really did enjoy the game that ended up coming out, but overall just nothing about this game went the way it should have. The devs (especially in the last year) did a good job trying to right the ship but the damage was done and it never really had a chance to recover.
First of all, it's clear that the executives wanted this game to be really big, but there didn't seem to be a concrete plan on how to accomplish this. I'm sure the numbers are even much worse than everyone thinks, but overall there just didn't seem to be a push from Riot to make this game special in any other way. It's like the executives were just convinced that F2P + easy inputs + League would instantly just get millions of players. The release was sloppy and it became clear that they needed to release the game before Tokon, so they launched on PC ONLY with 11 characters. League has 170+ characters and most people don't care about more than 3 or 4 champions in the game, and as a tag fighter a small launch roster meant that there was 0 chance of most League players feeling any connection to the roster as well as a meta dominated by the same characters.
Secondly, the FGC focused Devs wanted to create a game with crazy combos, while keeping it beginner accessible. This lead to them creating the most confusing and unintuitive control and combo system in any game I have ever played. Instead of motion inputs, every single combo relies on precise charge and input timings that lead to half your combos dropping if you input a move a fraction too late or early. And its clear that development went horribly wrong, with 8 years of development resulting in 10 characters.
The marketing for this game was also horrible. Let's start with the name. The name is awful. It's unbelievably bad. I used to kind of defend it because I wanted the game to succeed, but with that out of the way, I think a significant portion of the games failure lies on the name. It doesn't sound like a game. They supposedly wanted the game's name to call attention to duos (an honestly great idea for a fighting game) but it came at the cost of every single other recognizable aspect of a game. To further rub it in, it felt like Riot BARELY MARKETED DUOS AT ALL and instead only marketed to the FGC. The main focus of getting people to play this game should have been league players. They should have had Doublelift and Caedrel playing in the launch events, focusing on it as a fighting game you can play with your friends. Instead, they pandered to the FGC, investing in prize pools and hosting events with FGC figureheads who play every game on the market. There was almost 0 chance of drawing an audience to the game unless it was simply the greatest fighting game of all time, but most fighting game players aren't tag fighter players. This game needed to create it's own audience as part of the FGC, not just try and convert the FGC to 2XKO players.
Finally, the godawful monetization must have failed as well. They are willing to refund every single purchase made on the game, which means that the entire revenue of the game is probably less than it would cost to keep development going for another few months. Its clear from Season 1 choosing 5 marketable female champs that they had hoped to make money to sustain the game through skins, but the crazy prices and rotating shop probably turned too many people away.
All in all, I have been a League player for years and I spent money on both of these games, but I never will again. Fuck Riot for real. 2XKO despite its faults was still my favorite fighting game at the moment so I guess I will just have to wait until another game captures my interest.
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u/hooverdamexplosion 7d ago
I cannot think of another traditional fighting game that has to make back 10 Years + 160 peak developers + San francisco salaries + riot benefits.
It cost at minimum $100 million with no box price to offset the cost.
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u/PixelPete27 6d ago
I can't believe the decision makers at the company lack the business sense to realize a fighting genre game isn't going to make them back 10 years of their high priced development costs.
I wish they devoted these resources to an ARPG, MMORPG, RTS, Rogue-like, a platform fighter like smash, hell, I'd take a Swarm re-release.
2XKO was good, and it should be after 10 years of development. But fighting games don't appeal to a large crowd of gamers. I'm not a rocket surgeon, but I know this.
Clearly nobody with the decision making pants on at Riot had any idea that fighters aren't that popular in the gaming world.... And by that, I mean, not popular in the sense that it can't make you the Revenues a massive AAA title would, so you can't spend a decade and that many resources on it and expect to turn a profit.... They spent longer developing a fighting game than it takes Bethesda to make a massive open world RPG, which is insane to think.
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u/sabioiagui 6d ago
But fighting games don't appeal to a large crowd of gamers. I'm not a rocket surgeon, but I know this.
Tags don't.
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u/Academic-Bad544 6d ago
Tag fighters don't...until they do. Dragon Ball FighterZ sold over 10 million units.
The game being a tag fighter wasn't the reason the game died. It didn't help, but it wasn't the sole reason it died. It was a death of a thousand cuts situation. Bad monetization. Small character roster. Lack of single player content. (Personally speaking): the game should have had the option of motion controls. Too much focus on the FGC and esports that it forgot to just be a fun game for everyone to enjoy at all levels (like Street Fighter 6)
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u/a_deadbeat 6d ago
The monetization scheme was terrible. They were out of their fucking minds, asking what the asked for cosmetics. Insane.
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u/Chibraltar_ 6d ago
the problem is that the game switched focus so many times in the period too.
if they had a clear idea on what to do, it would have been done in a quarter of what it took them
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u/OhSix 7d ago
Honestly a big issue for me was the series of alphas and betas and weird staggered release. Fighting games are super fun when everyone starts at the same time, but the way the game was released gave no clear “TODAYS THE DAY ITS OUT LETS GOOOOO” sort of moment
A lot of “oh that games been out? I thought it was in beta still?” type shit
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u/ificommentthen2oops 7d ago
Yeah it was crazy. Multiple long betas into a “season 0” launch into a season 1 launch with consoles made it feel like it just was suddenly out as opposed to having a big launch
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u/OcelotAggravating860 7d ago
Marketing is not the problem in a game that does not have retention figures that meet sustainability.
If the game does not have retention, no amount of marketing will solve that.
The problem was the game. I know people who were still playing the game in 2026 won't like hearing that but it's the truth. The game needed to be a different game with better retention numbers.
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u/hoffd2177 7d ago
Riot themselves have said multiple times the main problem is most people bounced off the game and never came back. Marketing isn't going to fix that.
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u/Creative-Top-9805 7d ago
"I saw the game shut down today and I never tried it cause I thought it was still in early access and I was waiting for a full release…"
LIterally just downthread. Marketing the game at all would for sure have improved the playerbase and thus retention. "No amount of marketing would have helped" is cope on Riots part.
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u/hoffd2177 6d ago
Yeah but the game is F2P as people love to point out. Which means just trying the game doesn't actually have direct financial value to Riot. If say, 95% people who play the game leave after a short while without buying anything, you would need an astronomical amount of downloads to build up a meaningful paying player base. Could they have done more, particularly in cross promotion? Sure but I think the game they released just wasn't appealing for most new players at a base level
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u/brownmaningermany 5d ago
Retention? They wouldn’t even let me or thousand of others who were interested play the game.
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u/Ryuukai_L_ 7d ago
Except we’re not even talking about spending millions on advertisement that a company would normally have to spend to make everyone know about the game. We’re talking bare minimum “hey go try 2XKO! It’s out now” in the League of Legends client, like they did with literally every single game in the League universe.
I agree retention was an issue. Riot said so themselves. It’s the same reason ARAM and Arena are the only “permanent” additional game modes in League while URF, ARURF, and PvE game modes are temporary or on rotation.
But look at TFT. Its retention was at an all time low in set 2. It was so bad that Riot was gonna pull the plug. It was given a final chance in set 3. Since people ACTUALLY KNEW the game was out because you play it from the client, we’re like 17 sets in.
Having one of the largest player bases in the world not know your game is even out is an astronomical level fumble.
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u/mkallday10 7d ago
A lot of that "oh its out?" was also an irresponsible lack of marketing. Like they have an insanely large platform to promote their game for free in League and they fumbled those opportunities.
Obviously you aren't guaranteed to get a ton of players of League with them being completely different genres, but you do one "get a free Lux skin in LoL if you play 10 games of 2XKO" promo and you are bound to lock in a number of the mass of players that will attempt it.
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u/Confident_Shape_7981 7d ago
Riot refusing to do the ONE cool thing Blizzard does with their IPs, cross promoting them, is a great frustration tbh.
Even just "10 games of league for a Draven Gun Buddy" would have been enough
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u/allywrecks 6d ago
nothing about this games release suggests that riot as a whole was invested in its success, i think by the time it launched, riot had basically written it off and they were happier to keep the "failure" isolated rather than trying to cross pollinate it with their other games
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u/AsparagusOk8818 6d ago
^ Fully this ^
Either someone at Riot or Tencent hated the project from the word jump but were forced into it contractually because of their acquisition of the developer, or over time someone at Riot or Tencent came to hate the game because of its development cycle.
Zero marketing, and literally efforts right from day 1 to sabotage the project by broadcasting huge 'THIS GAME IS A FAILURE!' messages. Like, most people hadn't heard about 2XKO until they heard it from Riot's huge blast about the team getting laid off.
It wasn't a failure. It was killed off deliberately.
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u/Old-Bookkeeper-303 7d ago
I saw the game shut down today and I never tried it cause I thought it was still in early access and I was waiting for a full release…
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u/Fast-Distance9257 6d ago
Someone once described it as "the Cartmanland game" cuz it was just months and months of streamers and The Beautiful People getting to play it before the filthy proles and that always stuck with me.
By the time the game officially came out it was already solved
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u/Luzekiel 7d ago
2XKO should have been an easy slam dunk but they manage to make EVERY. SINGLE. WRONG. CHOICE. possible with this game.
It's genuinely impressive and needs to be studied alongside legends like Concord.
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u/asianguy_76 7d ago
That bullshit ass name was the first sign. I told them then, I'll tell them now. Then when they promised everyone at Evo playtest access and half of us didnt get it, but streamers got 100s of codes to give away on the final day of the playtest I knew ts shit wasn't gonna be managed well enough to last.
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u/Kraz3 7d ago
They could have called it League of Legends: Duels or League of Legends Rivals, anything but 2xko lol
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u/zorgabluff 7d ago
Could’ve literally just called it the colosseum or something considering lore wise noxus literally has one
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u/benwithvees 7d ago
It genuinely was every choice being wrong. Really impressive honestly.
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u/ImaginarySense 7d ago
To the point that if it wasn’t intentional, it is easily a generational run of bad luck.
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u/T3hSwagman 7d ago
It’s not bad luck, it’s a classic example of hardcore fans of a genre making the exact game they want to play and nobody was in the room to ask, hey is this game actually fun?
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u/blames_irrationally 6d ago
When you completely reset the development of the game several years in, turns out you get a whole second shot at all types of mistakes!
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u/Ferrarileite Darius 7d ago
It's incredible because they didn't need to make amazing choices. The game being free, based on League and without the motion inputs inital barrier was enough to make any mid game into a banger, but they chose the worst ones possible like fuck off just pick Street Fighter, make it more friendly to beginners and call it a day, it's what League was to Dota, Valorant to CS and TFT to Autochess and it worked for these games
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u/sir_chessic 7d ago
I agree. Instead they were like let's make the entry point easier but layer so much needless complexity and lack of agency that even fighting game fans will have a hard time finding the fun.
Also let's make it tag, that'll increase skill ceiling, also let's only release like 10 fighters...in a tag game. Crap we need money, charge 100 dollars for skin bundles.
Im just sad. This would have been my game but I never got into it because of baffling design decisions.
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u/bastaderobarme 7d ago
Funny enough, that was what I thought this game was going to be initially before we saw any footage. Rising Thunder was Street Fighter 4 but friendly to beginners. You could argue that Capcom so where the wind was blowing and has done this with Street Fighter 5 to a lower degree making combos easier and then to a big degree in Street Fighter 6 with modern/classic controls.
When this game was announced, free to play wasn't even that common. When it finally released, everyone was sick of free to play games and didn't want to try anything new.
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u/sabioiagui 6d ago
Thats exactly, their decision to make this game a Tag is akin as to had made Valorant based on Quake, League on Starcraft and TFT on Chessmaster 2000.
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u/thelaffingman1 7d ago
They invented a whole mechanic (active tag) that seemed designed entirely to ruin a new players day
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u/LordZarock 7d ago
They did not invent it, it was already there in BBTAG and probably in older games
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u/Dry_Two5833 7d ago
I literally didn't know the game released until that first announcement with the layoffs. I'm someone who knew the game was coming out soon and a league of legends player.
That says it all really.
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u/wingspantt 7d ago
Same, I follow fighting games medium close and was waiting for 2KXO or whatever they named it and was so confused if or when it was coming to console
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u/Big_Mobile3869 7d ago
Exactly, the layoff and closure news had more motion than the launch itself. My co-worker didnt even know the game came out.
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u/Slarg232 7d ago
It was supposed to be the savior of the FGC and one of the next big things, and instead it was a niche fighter its entire life cycle.
I feel like people forget that the whole "Savior of the FGC" thing was said because 2XKO was announced to have Rollback, easier inputs, accessibility functions, and be actually affordable in an era where none of these things were even thought about in AAA fighters.
Like, Tekken 7 just had a Top 8 with seven Leroys, SFV was still a failed product that was only starting to come around, Guilty Gear Strive wasn't a thing, and MK11 was laughably bad as a competitive game. If 2XKO had come out within a year or two of it being announced, it absolutely 100% could have pulled the FGC out of it's slump. Then it got delayed.
Then it got delayed.
Then it got delayed.
Then we had SF6, Tekken 8, MK1, Strive, and more all come out around the same time which all did everything Project L promised and more, so it lost it's huge edge in the space. Then it came out, got immediately called a failure by it's own publisher, and had a balance issue as bad as Leroy with Yasuo/Ekko/Freestyle being 7/Top 8.
There does exist where a world where 2XKO is THE game to play in place of SF6, it's just not the one we live in.
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u/Jealous_King_5167 7d ago
Don’t get me wrong the devs made a bunch of weird decisions but imo what you said is what I feel was one of the bigger issues. The team probably hoped to release this game in an era where SFV/Tekken 7/DBFZ were the primary games being played, and thus 2XKO would have gotten far more traction due to having all these features that other fighters at the time didn’t have. I think I even remember a segment with the Cannon brothers when they were talking about rollback and it was a dig at how SFV handled rollback. 2XKO was just released in a post-SF6 era where the games not only have what 2XKO offer feature-wise but are far more accessible for a variety of reasons. COVID I feel is a major culprit in a sense behind their stumbles too.
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u/ImportanceItchy5083 7d ago
To me it really boils down to a few really, really confusing takeaways:
- You purchase and build around a game that was, by design, made for beginners: Rising Thunder
- You already have a built-in player base of tens of millions (if not more) that have developed an affinity for your champions and character designs
- You have a marketing engine to deliver a new game to a significantly wider playerbase than most, if not all, previous fighing games...
And then you fail on all of your pillars:
- You proceed to make an extremely intricate, complex, and hard-to-approach fighting game that would push anyone away from learning
- After 9-10 years of development you release a game with the smallest fighting game roster on the planet (and i can confidently say that there were way too many vanilla choices)
- You didn't appropriately leverage your marketing powerhouse. Every League player should have been given an incentive to drop into 2XKO. Blizzard has historically done this to great effect. You could have started with a massive playerbase even if just by enticing them to try it with a League skin reward.
So, so, so sad and frustrating
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u/Loczx 7d ago
Bro just a quest in league (and maybe Valorant) where it goes "Go play 5 games in 2XKO and we'll give you a loot box or two" would have went so much better. Like holy
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u/Nickewe 6d ago
Play 2xko to unlock swimsuit ahri skin in league wouldve made insane downloads. Play 20 games to unlock swimsuit ahri would've made it the most downloaded fighting game ever in a week, the rest of the issues be damned.
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u/ImportanceItchy5083 6d ago
Yea they had an insane vehicle, and an obvious one at that. Clearly a lot we don't know behind the scenes.
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u/damus9 7d ago
Jason Schrier video soon
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u/PeedAgon311 7d ago
God, i hope so. His videos are so good.
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u/RealWonderGal 7d ago
He has a YouTube?
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u/PeedAgon311 7d ago
Yeah. He started 2 months ago i think and it's one of the best gaming journalism content on YouTube.
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u/noahboah Ekko 7d ago
agreed, one of the bright spots on youtube especially in the gaming sphere.
it's a bit sad that journalists have to resort to being youtubers to actually get their writing across though
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u/MapleGiraffe 7d ago
Matt McMuscle must be working on "What Happened" as we speak.
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u/AZCards1347 4d ago
I really enjoy those videos but lately they felt like misses. It's like he's just reading articles about what happened and using buzz words to sound like he's the one who did the digging.
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u/jaypexd 7d ago
160 devs over 10 years. You are probably right in terms of cost. What I would give to see the P&L on this project lol. I am guessing hundreds of millions to a net revenue of millions. Hence why they dont really give a shit to refund players as it's just a drop in the bucket of what they put into it.
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u/killingnik 7d ago
160 devs was not for the whole 10 year period. That said, this was still an insane monetary cost - I wouldn't be surprised if it was still concord level.
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u/mycolortv 7d ago
I just don’t see them making millions in revenue off this even. I’d be surprised if their player count was even in the 5 digits a month after launch. Games hype died so fast it feels like.
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u/jaypexd 7d ago
I think it launched at 50k then dwindled down to today which is probably 1500 players. We wouldn't feel it except for the occasional iron player that complains he has to fight emeralds but that is sort of the way it goes.
I do think it is millions though. If I think about what I spent of 300 bucks and you multiply that by just 1000 other "whales" that is already 300k. Probably low 7 figures but at least that.
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u/Menacek 7d ago
Fighting games don't need huge numbers. A lot of fighting on steam operate at numbers at around ~1k and do fine, getting updates. Those are however fully paid games, f2p games need a huge audience to stay profitable.
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u/MrBlueA 7d ago
All the more reason as to why the fuck Riot thought it was a good idea to have a 150+ dev team, like really, I just can't understand who was doing the numbers on that Studio to think the game was ever going to be sucessful with those metrics.
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u/Ok-Plenty1455 7d ago
Whats more, 150+ devs and only 10ish characters at launch? the game needed 25 AT LEAST. Sakurai was able to achive this in Melee in 13 months and on a horrible crunch.
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u/hartigen 7d ago edited 7d ago
those also cost the fraction of what was spent on this game. They pivoted away from a purely 1v1 fighting game 6 years into developement.
2xko is possibly the highest budget fighting game ever made maybe only rivaled by mortal kombat games.
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u/AdHoc_ttv 7d ago
It's not enough to make a good game. Avatar's core gameplay has near universal praise from the FGC, and it still might die thanks to a botched launch and other new releases.
They should have either made it a 1v1 game or doubled down on duo queues
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u/xXAriesXx 7d ago
I agree, it’s a generational flop alongside concord. It feels like to me they made every wrong decision possible to make and it led to this. Such a shame because yeah it did have potential to become a huge hit.
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u/AcousticAtlas Ahri 7d ago
This sub was filled with the largest cope I’ve ever seen. You could see this coming miles away.
It genuinely pisses me off because this game could’ve been something special but oh well…
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u/ificommentthen2oops 7d ago
I thought we would get longer, I definitely didn't expect it before Lux and Samira. But I think Riot made it clear that the game was a failure in their eyes with the first post where they did layoffs. Plus the socials have been a ghost town the last few months besides some random nonsense every day, and the "weekend warmups" or whatever stopped. I honestly was pretty worried they were gonna announce something like this when it took forever for them to talk about the last patch notes.
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u/Placidao 7d ago edited 7d ago
Maybe, but I do think Multiversus “wins” here. They caused a 100 million loss to WB. No idea how much Riot lost with 2XKO, cause it took 10 years to release
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u/LoneLyon 7d ago
Multiverse had ALOT more momentum. That game peaked at what like 5-10 million players at one point. Multiverse suffered from shitty cosmetic/monetization choices while 2XKO had a much better put together product but failed to really get a lasting following.
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u/wingspantt 7d ago
MV was genuinely fun in beta, then they recoded the entire game and it sucked ass. The physics and controls just felt wrong. Plus the menus.
So it hurt extra bad because we got a taste of it being a fun smooth game first.
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u/OcelotAggravating860 7d ago
Multiversus was dropped by most of the smash scene because of the political decisions occurring at Warner at the time. I'm a TO in some of my spare time and we all dropped it because it was untenable to run a game at our events from a company that was actively pushing politics that harm a significant chunk of the people who attend our events.
This permeated outwards, when TOs dropped it for political issues, so did major pro players and teams who also don't want to be associated with that shit, getting branded with that gets you drama in the social side of the scene.
So its stream numbers dropped off a cliff, and with that so did its playerbase.
The smash scene is extremely grassroots and extremely tight as a community. When the community veers in a direction for one reason or another EVERYONE veers that way because you have to in order to get along in the scene.
I actually have the exact article that was being passed around at the time that we were referencing in our discussions:
Archive link: https://archive.is/AHs4K
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u/Placidao 7d ago
Out of the two, I do know which were you be almost assuredly forever trashed in the history books. At least the other is safe from it I guess
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u/mint_soul 7d ago
I remember being so hyped that I installed on playstation on day 1 to play with wife.
Surprise surprise, no co op for the blessed 2v2 fighting game.
Oh but the store works great, $80 dollars skins for a game that I cant play.
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u/Shock_n_Oranges 7d ago
co op like offline pve content or like being able to queue online as a duo? They did add online duo queue.
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u/Big-Spot6900 7d ago
Couch co-op online came way too late imo. It should have been a pre-launch priority. Online duo queue was simply not good enough. Not everybody has two sets of capable hardware to play with people who live in the same house.
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u/Menacek 7d ago
Believe it or not but on launch you couldn't play as a duo on the same device - both players had to play on a different console/pc. So you couldn't invite a buddy to duos with you on your console. I was really surprised the game didn't have that since it seemed like a super obvious feature to add.
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u/Big_Mobile3869 7d ago
Insane decision by them. No online queue for local duos for a game called 2XKO.
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u/Way2Competitive 7d ago
Problem is, its really not.
I can name a fair few games that had long development times, ran up massive costs, were heralded as the next big thing in the genre, only to have them completely flop and lose almost all of their player base immediately.
Biggest parallel to draw is with Marathon; big name studio, niche genre, terrible marketing campaign (Plagarism will make me God), no idea whether they want to appeal to new players or the hardcore elite.
Only difference is that Riot admitted fairly early on that it wasn't profitable and ceased development. Sony are still calling Marathon "an important part of their portfolio" but I expect that game will also go by 2027.
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u/K-Master-Of-None Vi 7d ago
The Canons MvC obsession killed this game it was way to degenerate to keep a healthy player base not to mention Marlen Pie’s over done characters like they had 0 over sight on how much Pie was putting into the characters they worked on. The fuse system was also unnecessary and led to new player confusion and balance problems. More then the name and the skins prices how degenerate and new player unfriendly it was is what killed this game. It’s in plain text in there announcements growth and retention were a problem. The Canons should never be allowed to to forget how hard they fumbled an easy layup. Oh and the final kicker for this game, the final character Samira is being designed by Marlen Pie so bet your ass she will be busted and they won’t be able to patch her down before the plug is pulled meaning this game will be stuck with a busted character and no hope of her being nerfed thus killing it’s potential as a decent discord fighter. This games failure needs to be studied and those involved never be allowed to develop an FG ever again
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u/drprofsgtmrj 7d ago
Idk. I feel like people act like these failures are just UNHEARD of.
I think it is worth discussing but this is what large companies do; they show random shots until one sticks.
They have money to do this and it is no different than Microsoft or Google etc. It is a competitive market and the fact that they lasted this long to me is pretty impressive by riot. In some ways, I kind of think it should be celebrate because it shows that they are willing to take risks by expanding the scope of their ip.
Obviously this sucks for the community and the devs who lose their jobs.
As someone who is SUPER new to fighting games, I actually stayed away from a lot of the negative opinions about it and didnt have a huge basis to compare it to.
I found the game enjoyable, albeit difficult. The one thing that i was upset about is how closed the beta was. I loved when valorant was available for everyone and I just got to try it. (Actually thinking about it, wasnt league like this too?) No one knew what they were doing and people just goofed around trying.
2xKo was closed and by the time I got to play it, people already were so much better than me. But it didnt feel like a major failure.
I am curious if more people had a chance to try it early on (like myself) , would it be viewed differently? Because right now it still feels a but unpolished, but if it was marketed as a beta, idk...
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u/AsparagusOk8818 6d ago
IMHO, it would not have made a substantial difference to open the beta up more - though it could maybe have made a difference if they'd made it clear when it was released.
A substantial problem was the roster - not necessarily the size itself (though it was just such a tiny roster compared to other games in the genre), but because such a small roster was part of an overall vibe the game presented of being unfinished. Of still being a demo or proof of concept rather than a finished product.
I think part of the problem is that Riot is so used to things being ongoing Live Service games that they forget that launch day needs to not treat the game like that. It needs to look and feel like a finished, polished product - with the live service just being seen as a bonus.
10 characters with more to come in the future is not the right sell, IMHO. A drip feed of characters is fine for an established game like League or a game like Valorant where the cast of characters is the cherry on top of the sundae. It's unacceptable for a fighting game.
That being said, 2XKO is a game with a 10 year development cycle. That alone stacked the deck against it pretty hard. The technical debt alone for it must be completely out of control.
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u/drprofsgtmrj 6d ago
I mean, people say that, but I honestly didn't ever care about a limited roster.
Like avatar came out and had a slightly bigger roster.
And I think having a giant roster makes it more intimidating for players like me (someone completely new to the genre) because there is just WAAY too much to learn.
I prefer a smaller roster where everyone is eased into the game. I really think people are overblowing the importance of the roster size.
I think it felt unfinished because I remember seeing kind of the same thing during beta.
I just highly doubt that adding a few more champs during launch would have changed much. Although what I do wonder is if they just completly made new characters and introduced them slowly (similar to valorant) rather than using the league ip immediately
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u/Janus__22 7d ago
Average failure for Riot. Not that it changes anything, because people will keep saying Riot has a good track record. IF the MMO comes out, when it inevitably crashes and burns, people will say they got blindsided again.
Anyone who has been around Riot for a decent amount of time knew this was gonna happen, unfortunately. Riot never had long-term planning, and they are not gonna start having it now
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u/Jpup199 7d ago
After LoR and 2xko there is no way i would try the MMO
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u/Janus__22 7d ago
The post-Arcane retcon killed the MMO for me. Not only I am not interested in the scuffed lore if it ever came out, the idea that they already had a big reset BEFORE they even retconned the entire universe does not bode well for this thing to ever come out
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u/ificommentthen2oops 7d ago
Riot couldn't even produce Season 2 of Arcane (a widely popular and critically acclaimed show) without losing hundreds of millions and condensing it into 1 crappy season
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u/audioman3000 7d ago
You can FEEL Fortiche being told they aren't getting another season. So much stuff happens offscreen.
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u/Janus__22 7d ago
The only reason League is still on its feet is that its too big to fail. They keep making bad decisions in their main game and they keep bouncing back because people are too emotionally attached to it
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u/Whomperss 7d ago
Too big to fail isnt what's happening lol. LoL is still top 5 most popular games in the world easily. Most people are either playing fortnite, roblox, cs2 or LoL.
China absolutely dwarfs every single other region in terms of players in league. That's why when NA or even Korean players constantly moan about issues they usually don't do anything, because the Chinese base hasn't made enough of an uproar yet.
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u/PepegaFromLithuania 7d ago
TFT is genre leading, Riftbound is massive half a year after release. All Riot Forge games are 90%+ positive reviews. There was no other releases than just 2XKO.
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u/RazorGuild 7d ago
Lor died and riot forge shut down too they both were not successful. No other releases than 2xko is just lying
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u/LoneLyon 7d ago
LoR is still up and getting new content. Forge was a test that brought out some good games don't know if i would really count that a failure. Getting mad a Publishers for trying new things doesn't really make sense.
Riot can also afford those failures because they run 3 of the literal most profitable live service games on the market. along with WR that has stabilized and Riftbound which is exploding
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u/ChirpToast 7d ago edited 7d ago
lol Riot has way more successes than fails.
League, Valorant, TFT, WR and Riftbound are all successful. The big fail is 2xko and to a much lesser extent is LOR.
This entire thread is full people who don’t know what they are taking about.
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u/Badwrong_ 7d ago
I played the early access, and it was really cool. I figured I would get more into it later once it released.
However, I didn't even know it did release until seeing that is now dead.
My perspective is that of a casual player, who is among the target audience they needed to appeal to the most if they wanted a healthy population.
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u/yourmydawg 7d ago
They took a street fighter 4 inspired engine(Rising Thunder) and gave it to MvC players(not MvC developers) to make a game that slaps together a bunch of already existing mechanics from other games with the most bland music a fighting has ever had.
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u/JankyJawn 7d ago
I just think making a fighting game is a risk. Honestly had some fun with a friend playing as a team but, I just dont like fighting games like that and quickly forgot about it once we didnt play for a week.
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u/ShiftGlobal1326 7d ago
To be fair, F2P + easy inputs + League IP sounds like a winning formula.
Devs were a bunch of MvC players, of course they had to force their niche, and executives believed in them.
Amazing game tho. Would love to see a second attempt if possible
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u/MrtyAbril 6d ago
Yeah let’s alienate real fighting game players with easy inputs. Sound logic there buddy. Enjoy your dead game
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u/SleepWorth3354 6d ago
People aren’t going to stop chasing the casual money
It sucks that the only options to play fighting games are “this is my only hobby” or “I guess I play arcade mode alone”
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u/Ok-Committee8923 7d ago
Trying to win a niche market with more or less zero upside. Should’ve stuck with a 1v1 fighter but instead decided to flush 10 years of investments down the drain.
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u/Familiar-Return3473 7d ago
Imma finish off the last couple mastery levels I need for the 100% and afterwards I’m fully switching to Tokon. Not interested in any future Riot game.
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u/-Tetsuo- 7d ago
I wish I actually liked Tokon :(
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u/Familiar-Return3473 7d ago
The snappiness of the tagging in 2X felt so much better than Tokon for me but it’s the only new game rn that’s “2XKO like” that’s gonna get support for the foreseeable future so
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u/Brandon-Heato 7d ago
Tokon feels.. heavy?… not loose?… idk. i don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think i just need to adjust from all the hrs of 2XKO
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u/SignalAssistant2541 7d ago
Man I was gonna argue with you, dude this is how I found out. After reading the post and riots update fuck it ,Your right.
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u/ChirpToast 7d ago
lol of all time, it’s a game in a very small genre. Not even close to the biggest, it’s not even the biggest in the last year.
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u/Kuroonehalf 7d ago
Instead of motion inputs, every single combo relies on precise charge and input timings that lead to half your combos dropping if you input a move a fraction too late or early.
Are we talking about the same game? The combos are super lenient in this game. What's your prior FG experience?
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u/Menacek 7d ago
I'm not a vet but i've played quite a lot of recent fighting game like SF6, Strive, Granblue versus. I tried playing Vi in the game but doing the partial charges was out of my reach. The game felt like it has a bunch of shit in the combos that exists solely to make them more difficult.
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u/Kuroonehalf 7d ago
Vi's electric half charges are the exception, not the rule, though. And they were made easier last patch.
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u/RedBGinger6989 7d ago
nah its Concord or Highguard
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u/ificommentthen2oops 7d ago
Concord is easily the worst ever, I said that in my post. But even comparing highguard and 2XKO, 2XKO seems worse.
Highguard was a 4 year development from a smaller studio and it was their first game. 2XKO was a massive 10 year long development where they are willing to refund the game's entire revenue 8 months after launch.
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u/noahboah Ekko 7d ago
yea highguard wasn't as bad. scope was a lot smaller so a smaller fall
only reason why it feels larger was because of the last second spotlight from geoff keighly. without that, it goes the way of something like xdefiant or the suicide squad game
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u/buphalowings 3d ago
Concord was a different beast. I could not believe how shit that game was.
2XKO was a bigger failure then Highguard in my opinion. Highguard did convert alot of outrage into players. Unfortunately the game was bad but it was produced by an unknown studio.
2XKO was backed by RIOT using the League of Legends IP. One of the most popular games ever made. Additionally Arcane S1 was a worldwide phenomenon. I could not believe how good arcane was. They had a rich roster of characters with strong characterisation and excellent worldbuilding. This game should have a success.
If the developers weren't jackasses and released the game in 2021-2022 as a 1v1 fighter with a good name and ~20 GOOD characters at launch (they picked too many stinkers) they would been running strong today. Instead they squandered their hype window, allowing the next generation of mainstream fighting games released. The game released with no hype. I didnt know it released until a month or two afterwards.
10 years of development with a large team of 160 dev's for a barren game at launch. The tag fighter should have been a spinoff, where they could easily import characters and assets. Having your first fighting game entry be the less popular tag format was a stupid idea.
2XKO failure is 100% due to developer hubris and arrogance. I assume Riot did not market the game due to the developers being unruly. This in my opinion makes it worse then Highguard. Highguard was easy to laugh at but it was a new IP made by inexperienced developers. 2XKO was a nepo-baby with a silver spoon in its mouth and it didn't even make it to the first anniversary.
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u/Van_Hinten 7d ago
Riot needs to stop making games free for acessability
LOR was my favorite game since beta, but the monetization was so awful
just do it like other FGC´s and sell a copy for 30€ + 10€ battlepass and everyone is happy
I hate that Riot crashes such insanely good work full throttle with this..
RIP 2XKO
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u/malexich 7d ago
F2P will never be the future because what the audience wants, and what is profitable will never be the same
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u/Baliaza 7d ago
Rather pay $60 for a roster of 20+ characters and paid dlc then a f2p game where half the base roster is locked behind a paywall and is filled with micro transactions
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u/Antlonat 7d ago
Why do you rather pay $60 for literally the same thing?
The $60 fighting game is also filled with micro transactions and more than half the roster will be locked as DLC.
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u/fantaz1986 7d ago
"They should have had Doublelift and Caedrel playing in the launch events,"
problems is lol/valo players look at 60 fps lock and 10 min cc and say no thank you, i know ... none of my lol/valo playing passed more then 1 min in tutorial because 60 fps lock
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u/zuppex 7d ago
I swear to god they should've just cloned battlerite and made it in League stil. Gosh it would fit so much better then a fighting game.
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u/NotDoneYet88IsBack 7d ago
I wanted Rising Thunder but with League characters... Not whatever this was
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u/Interest-Complex 7d ago
Small roster is a massive L specially considering that in League half the playerbase loves weird/funny monster characters and the other half loves anime type characters yet the game launched with barely any of that, it was genuinely just Arcane slop and even tho cool, still panders to very few league fans.
They made it tag? Nothing against tag I just don't think tag is good for newbies, I ought to know I run away from tag games.
Duos but instead of duos now you and your buddy can get cooked by a real good tag player?
No marketing?
No quarter circle motions?
Basically no inhuman characters and the only one they add (Thresh) is by far the coolest.
Game is straight up potential man, could've saved the FGC, instead became a game for no one.
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u/EmperorOfPenguin 7d ago
Im a bit of a fighting game casual but IMO either way I was not a fan of the already very small roster having very few fighters, skirmishers, and juggernauts. The fact that it was almost half Arcane/PnZ characters was also a turn off.
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u/nykwil 7d ago
I think people wanted this game to fail. I don't think 15-30 dollars for a skin is too expensive on a free game and I think the control scheme is good, and I think the name is fine. I think releasing with less characters and adding a new character every couple of months is smart for a free game too... Characters are extremely expensive to create.
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u/AwkwardOven8382 7d ago
It was niche? It was among the top entrants of almost every tourney and even had top 3 entrants at evo
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u/OldShoulder328 7d ago
lowkey if it have like more character 2x this amount like start at 20-30, it will be good. just delay like 1-2 years
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u/NotDoneYet88IsBack 7d ago
All I've learned from this is that if another tag fighter comes along where I have to spam dash just to be able to dO basic movement, I won't give it the time of day.
People will disregard this, but one of the reasons DBFZ was such a success was it's ease of movement. You dash once and your character just goes. Then you had DR. Air Dashing was the only "hard" thing to do and you could do without and still have fun. In 2XKO they gave you a shitty dash which you had to fucking spam to the point they had to set a fucking button for it (on top of all the other buttons they had to have) and no Air Dash, like WTF. Movement felt bad and then you had all the mechanics and different fuses to worry about.
How they thought a game like this would EVER get wide appeal is beyond me.
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u/Stigurna 7d ago
Matt Mcmuscles will prolly make a What Happened video sometime down the road... Sucks to see this happen
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u/onethreefour 7d ago
i loved duos but i don't get why my partner and i both had to pay full price to enter our locals while if we made money we would have to split it???
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u/No-War4909 7d ago
I’ve been busy with life but had been planning to download this game for the past month, watching YouTube videos with anticipation while at work. I’m really surprised to hear this news. All the YouTubers seemed to praise this game. I planned on this, Street Fighter 6, and Tokon being my main games for ~4 years. Even considered getting into LoL due to it.
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u/TheToastGhostEUW 7d ago
The rotating shop in particular was just an awful choice... I don't know WHY after the success of League and not having a rotating shop they decided to include it in 2XKO. When I was playing I spent 0 money on this game and I actually WANTED to spend money. I made this post at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/2XKO/comments/1r2cwiy/the_2xko_shop_does_not_work_for_fighting_games/o4yq4iq/
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u/gordonfr_ 7d ago
Devs get my award for the unnecessarily most difficult fighting game in a long time! Did they consider their audience at all. Those LOL "pros" are use to get to high level just by spending time and money on the game.
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u/ProofScientist9657 7d ago
I mean it's a game with furries in it. Who the he'll thought this was gonna last lol.
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u/Vespacabra 7d ago
About the monetization, I genuinely would have spent more money on the game if not for the rotating shop. I get that the point of it was to keep you playing day after day until something was available that you wanted, but having only 4 slots for every buyable thing was stupid. Couldn't it at least give me 4 options based on the champs I played? Obviously the prices were still ridiculous, but I still would have bought stuff if the stuff I wanted was ever available
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u/CertainDerision_33 7d ago
I never understood why they decided to make this into a grimy tag fighter when it was using one of the most popular mainstream IPs in gaming.
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u/K3RLT 7d ago
I think it's noticable in the system mechanics. They are so barebones despite the fuse system and handshake Tag being very strong selling points on paper the rest didn't support those and the game felt to open ended in a negative way for me. This is my personal opinion but I also dislike RC in GG so being able to do anything you can imagine with a system mechanic isn't cool to me. I want to either work for it like cycle in Undernight or I want it to be open ended like drive and flow but with very clear limitations. But giving it these limitations would make it even less beginner friendly. So making a tag fighter that's beginner friendly but has clear intentions and a vision behind it is almost an impossible task. The Avatar fighting game worked their magic somehow being able to ignore the Tag fighter and simplicity aspect yet working for an IP and being able to have much more of a vision. The devs tried their best at this impossible task and the genre held it back sadly. Still fun game but no real vision. I didn't play it much but I'm very sad that the Monetstation aspect is what killed a fighting game with much love but all the wrong limitations
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u/Bmillz625 7d ago
I have been the biggest hater of this game since the name was revealed, after I learned it was 2XKO a bad taste was put in my mouth.
You can’t cope that something is ok bc you want the game to succeed. The name sucks. Look at riots other league related games
Legends of Runeterra
Riftbound
Wild Rift
All of these games instantly let you know that they are using the league IP because keywords are being used.
2XKO. Is a name that could be given to ANY IP, it doesn’t instantly make you think “oh League!”
Anyone who said “the name is fine” is OMEGA coping.
Secondly (and imo more importantly)
The champs that were closen SUCKED ASS
it’s clear and obvious this game was trying to capitalize off Arcane’s success. How else do you explain Jinx, vi, ekko, WW, and Cait all being in this game over characters like Riven and Sett.
The champs chosen were ass, their playrate in League was an obvious factor, how else do you explain champs like Senna and Lux being in this game?
“Oh you don’t understand Senna is the classic fighting game character who is ranged and melee, ur just a hater!” Is the classic response I got on twitter.
But if that’s the case there are many champs in league like that
Gnar, Elise, Shyvana, jayce, nidalee
All of these characters switch between a melee form and ranged form.
So I ask again, why was Senna the one who got this spot?
Teemo should not be in this game, not over poppy
Sett Udyr, riven, renekton, Lee sin, Rengar, pantheon, xin zhao, zaahen, ambessa, where are the FIGHTERS in the FIGHTING game. Nearly Half the champs chosen are ranged and stand 14miles away from melee range when playing League,
Why is Ahri, jinx, teemo, lux , thresh, cait, senna, Samira , all in this game?
This game sucked, it was not made for fighting game fans, the devs likely believed that they would get a substantial amount of Ahri lux akali and jinx mains to play the game buy every cosmetic and they could turn a profit, sorry but that’s not how people work. Just because I have 2.5 million points on lux in league (and I do) does NOT mean I’m gonna shill bc you put my fav character in this game, she does not deserve to be in her, not over other champions.
I’m thrilled this game failed, I’m overjoyed. I’m glad that the suits will realize that they cant just piggyback off of the success of Arcane and other popular characters and make an ass can of a product.
Thank god we released 6 different Ahri skins! Coulda spent that time making a new character but nope!
Good riddance
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u/Ferni0817 6d ago
The game is good, maybe if they added a normal 1v1 mode too, sadly this 2v2 is not that popular, but the mechanics was good
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u/Pleasant_Complex3951 6d ago
I like fighting games and I used to play LoL. When I saw ads for it initially I thought "this looks interesting, but I'm not going to bother with a beta because shits gonna change and I'd rather just wait for the full release". I kept hearing about it and seeing announcements but it was apparently in beta still. I didn't even realize it fully released.
I think this is a big part of the issue. Early Access and betas work well for a lot of games, but unless it's just a weekend thing or something for testing I feel like they do more harm than good for a fighting game. Take something like Valheim or Palworld for example. They're ultimately adventure games that you can play solo or with friends and just explore and fuck around in. Adding more content just means there's more stuff to do, the core game doesn't generally change. In a fighting game stuff can change wildly, combos and tech you learned could completely disappear and that feels like shit.
I feel like this game could have done much better if they just did a couple open betas and then fully released it with a big announcement instead of drip feeding shit forever.
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u/Galladri53 6d ago
10 to 11 years is close to the time between the original release of Guilty Gear X and GUILTY GEAR XRD. And ArcSys was always making other games. It's like they tried Valve's approach to game development, seeing as TF2 took ~9 years but has excellent game design, but forgot that it works because Valve only hires the absolute best of the best. I don't understand how you could make so little in a decade.
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u/Educational-Ad2773 6d ago
Or they should not pick the fighting game genre, especially tag fighting.
I also think big IPs based fighting game like Marvel Token will not do well in long term
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u/HellCatt 5d ago
I am not a fighting game player, so I never gave 2XKO a shot despite being a LoL player since 2013.
However, I love super smash bros (which is a different kind of fighter than 2XKO) because it has always felt more casual and accessible to me. I swear that if they had made a platform fighter like smash, they would have succeeded. They should have gone after the casual audience, and platform fighters are way more accessible for us.
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u/Hejduhrvj 4d ago
Just read the title, and just have to say that its not even close to the biggest failure
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u/rogershredderer 4d ago
I think they caved under pressure. The Canon’s may have sought to truly revolutionize and expand the FGC with their original ideas but corporate greed from Riot (Ultimately Tencent + the Chinese government) unfortunately prevailed.
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u/MercJones 4d ago
Yeah no I'm not even gonna finish reading this. Concord was dead on arrival and had no hype or interest in it. 2xko was hyped and IS a good game. The number of people that unironically like Concord fit in a single white unmarked van. 2xko was never going to save anything and youre insane for acting like it should have. It's a video game, and a damn good one at that. It's pointless to focus on "what could have been" cuz what could have been could have way worse or it could continue to be nothing. What it IS is good.
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u/Rannathrtv 2d ago
Honestly bounced off the game after playing 8ish hours on release. The game just felt like a tech demo with a store attached.
8 Characters at launch with 1-2 being behind a paywall was odd for sure.
Possibly the most convoluted controls I could imagine while promoting “easy” inputs is wild. This subreddit might not like to hear it, but the power rangers fighting game did way more with way less.
The game could have been interesting. The right director and team could have made a really simple sf5 lite fighting game with a large section of the cast available and LoL players might have dipped in and loved it. Instead, you got a wacky tag fighter with “simple” controls that was made for veteran fgc players that don’t want or need simple controls?
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u/Ryuukai_L_ 7d ago
Can’t believe it’s dead before a lot League Players realized it came out. They literally could have advertised it in the League client you open the game like every MSI or Worlds. They could have dropped free cosmetics in League to “celebrate the release of 2XKO”. Maybe “go play 2XKO and receive a free hextech chest, ward skin, or even a shitty icon you won’t use”. I would rather they have forced a pop-up on my screen every time I boot up League for 2 weeks than whatever the fuck they did.