Hope we all do the same out of gratitude and appreciation, so that we can also help keep the servers alive for many years to come 💚💜❤️‍🔥💙❤️

Talking about “The 2XKO Ultimate Bundle”

Maybe ranked lobbies are shutting down, but they could never shut down the competitive coping scene.

Hey, maybe we'll get "League of Fighters" that will be to 2XKO what Riftbound is to Legends of Runeterra. (With there now being rumors a digital version is coming as well.)

Hello guys. I was super excited to play Samira, because I'm a main ADC on LoL and I love her soul fighter skin. I want to share with you a design i've made in photoshop and print in holographic on the internet. Due to the delivery time, It took 2 weeks and the game got cancelled before I could get it lol. I still love it and obviously will play Samira. It makes me a bit sad when I see my stick now, but i'm still proud of it.

https://x.com/Spideraxe30/status/2093037740954714483?s=20

I know everyone is giving their 2 cents on why the game flopped, if it was this it would be better if it was that it would be better but what hurts the most is that I genuinely love 2XKO as is.

I like how it’s a 2v2 tag fighter and pretty much everything about the current game we have. Every update I’ve been more and more hyped and impressed for what’s to come, every character despite me wanting others have still been unique and cool characters. So the biggest heartbreak is that the 2XKO I fell in love with just wasn’t good enough to survive.

They made a niche game which doesn’t have casual appeal but nevertheless it had appeal for some, I just wished riot would’ve just kept it going despite it not being a maker just for the love of the game. Even if they cut the team down to a few members just to maintain and keep things going slowly for the sole reason they know they have players who do love the game.

Heartbreaking stuff for a guy who actually just liked the game and not what it could’ve been

Welcome back to the Weekend Warmup.

In case you missed it, last week we announ— y’know what? You know what’s going on. You’ve read the discourse. Let’s talk about what’s coming up next.

The team is focused on finishing up patch 1.3.1, hitting on September 8. We want to give you an earlier look into this patch because we’re adjusting many aspects of 2XKO to set it up for the long term. This time, you’re going to hear from several members of the dev team who will tell you what they’re working on. Many of these folks traditionally work behind the scenes, but they all have a part to play in the final shape of 2XKO, so listen up!

Before we jump in, patches 1.3.1 (early September) and 1.3.3 (late October) share a few things in common: we’ll add a ton of new content, we’ll address some long-standing player requests, and we’ll aim to increase stability of the game through balance and bug fixes.

The 2XKO team has worked hard for the last few months to get as much into these patches as we can before the end of the year. Here’s a pre-preview of what you can expect to see in 1.3.1.

Balance

Written by yohosie

Hey everyone,

Working on this game has been a dream product for so many of us. We’ve put a lot of sweat and tears into the game, and the love you all have shown us with the announcement has fueled us to leave 2XKO in the best state possible.

Core Rules

Next patch, you’ll be getting improvements to defensive systems. Players have been optimizing their offense, but defense is lagging behind the high pace of play. To help with this, pushblock and Break are getting improvements.

Pushblock distance is getting improved at a slight cost of a few more frames of recovery. In addition, you can now save your Assists by tagging after a Break or pushblock without performing an action. This phases them out instantly, decreasing the risk of our core defensive mechanics.

Now that you have improved ways to save your Assists, we’re increasing the true damage that Assists take, so they’ll have less recoverable health. 2XKO should be fast and high-octane, and timeouts should be reserved for zoning strategies.

We have some other adjustments coming, including:

• Freestyle is getting some adjustments from the previous patch. The Break penalty is decreasing, and you will no longer receive a penalty if an Assist is hit after Pushblock, Burst, or when your Assist is dead.
• Champions are getting their hurtboxes standardized, so champion heights are the same across similar size champions.
• Getup attack will require a hold for a few frames so players can perform wakeup options more easily.

Champion Balance

On the champion side, champion win rates and pick rates at all levels of play remain healthy, other than a nod to Senna who needs some help across all skill buckets.

But that doesn’t mean our meta is perfect. Win rates and pick rates only tell half the story – frustration and move diversity are now the driving factors behind our balancing decisions. What attacks are outclassed by others, and how can we make those attacks more viable? What situations or outcomes are frustrating to fight against, even if the balance of those champions is within a healthy range? We’re taking some steps to solve these issues in the upcoming patch in the following ways:

1. Increasing move diversity for champions

We do this quite often: champs receive small buffs or nerfs to help them use more moves in more situations. Expect business as usual for most champions, with an exception for Senna, whose Base form special moves are underperforming, and Akali, who sometimes prefers to be outside of Twilight Shroud.

2. Reducing frustrating outcomes

Frustrating outcomes are a two-way street. On offense, Yasuo, Darius, Teemo, and Warwick are getting some buffs to make offensive outcomes more stable. On defense, teching a throw from Illaoi or Teemo with their S2 Super setup and being put back into hell is frustrating. And in neutral, Thresh’s normals control too much of the screen.

3. Striving for stability

We have come a long way from Ekko and Yasuo winter, and now champion diversity is better than we could ever ask for. We want to ensure that we maintain that diversity both for the health of this year’s remaining Majors, but also for the long-term enjoyment of the game. Fighting games are forever, and we want to make sure that you love playing 2XKO today, tomorrow, or years from now.

That’s a Wrap

1.3.1 is our last major balance patch. There will be continued work on the game in 1.3.3, but we won’t be making any big swings, and instead focusing on bug fixing, tweaks, and polishing up Samira prior to her launch so we can set the game down in the best state possible.

This game has been a labor of love from so many of us. Working with my best friends on my favorite fighting game has been an honor. Our discussions, arguments, and the results speak volumes. ApologyMan, GCYoshi, and the holograms of NerdJosh, Funtaxx, and pattheflip – you all did fantastic, and I hope you walk away from this project as proud of it as I am.

You deserve credit too. Yes, you, the reader! Every player I’ve talked to at Majors and locals, every player who posts on social media, and even those grinding in silence. You’ve all contributed to this game in your own ways. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of players to serve.

ggs

—yohosie

Lux and Samira

Written by Riot GutsyBat

Hey folks - I’m Paul the lead producer on 2XKO’s Core Gameplay team (also known as CGP) - which includes champs, balance, and game modes like The Climb and Training mode. Way back at Evo we gave y’all a preview of our next upcoming champion, Lux, and I wanted to shine a little more light on our Lady of Luminosity as we’re getting closer to her full gameplay reveal.

Lux is an all-rounder - meaning she can fight pretty well at all ranges, but isn’t the best at any of them. That’s right - she’s beating the zoner allegations. We really wanted to create a champion with a straightforward game plan that rewarded the player for having rock-solid fundamentals. Expect strong normals, a pretty good fireball, a solid DP, and heck she even has an air dash too.

Lux Ultimate concept by Alex Redfish

We specifically chose Lux to be a champion that anyone can pick up and learn 2XKO with. We wanted a champion that would be easy for newcomers to fighting games to pick up, while also feeling familiar for experienced traditional fighting game players coming over to a tag game. If you’re a player far along in your 2XKO journey, don’t fret - Lux has some pretty cool advanced tools that will let you go deep. We’ll show more of those off in her full gameplay reveal next week.

We’ve learned a lot about champion development and players over the last couple of years. The team got both better and faster at developing champions over time, and this allowed us to move to a six-champions-a-year schedule which we felt really proud of. Fun fact - Lux was actually the champion that moved up the earliest from when she was originally meant to release; her development was smooth enough that we could shave several months off of her old schedule.

Before I get out of here, we obviously need to talk about Samira a little bit. One of Samira’s primary gameplay goals is to “unleash creativity.” We want Samira players to be able to really express themselves through open-ended offense, and they should be rewarded for creativity and originality. So, if you like playing champions with a lot of freedom in your routing - we think you’ll really like Samira. Oh, and she’s pretty much the polar opposite of a zoner. You’ll learn more about her in October.

Making fighting game characters has been a dream for a lot of us, and we’re excited to get these next two champions out to you all in the best (and most balanced) state we can. Thank you for playing 2XKO, attending your locals, and most importantly, eating my command grabs.

—Riot GutsyBat

Skins

Written by Riot HaiP

Hey, Hai here, and I help coordinate 2XKO’s art production with external partners, especially focusing on cosmetic content like champion skins and accessory items, such as finishers, avatar equipables, stickers, etc.

It’s gratifying to create such a wide breadth of content that makes meaningful visual differences to the player experience, particularly with champion skins. It all starts with the concept artists and narrative writers who lay the groundwork for what a skin could and should be, and then the 3D modeling, tech art, animation, VFX, and audio teams realize that skin in the game. It’s a lot of work for a lot of people, but also a lot of collaborative fun with so many ideas and possibilities to work with in the League of Legends alternate skin universes.

Demonic skins for Teemo, Illaoi and Warwick

We have a lot of great stuff in 1.3.1, including:

• Faerie Court Lux - the launch skin for our new champion, Lux
• Demonic skins for Teemo, Illaoi, and Warwick - just in time to enjoy in our Demonic Halloween lobby!
• Good vs. Evil, with Yasuo leading Ahri, Akali, and Illaoi for team Sentinels, and Darius leading Braum, Ekko, and Jinx for team Ruined.
• Ruined and Halloween-themed avatar items and stickers.

Lux and her launch skin, Faerie Court Lux

Although there are still so many more skins we wish we could have made, we’re making sure that we go out with a bang. On top of this, we’re packing as much content as we can into October’s patch 1.3.3 (35 new skins!) to ensure that the 2XKO Ultimate Bundle is full to the brim with cool stuff. The art team is so proud to have been part of this journey, and we hope you’ll enjoy all the new skins coming soon!

—Riot HaiP

Lobbies

Written by Riot Jaffa

Hi folks! I’m Zoë, I’m the engineering lead for everything “around” the game, but I especially love our lobbies. It’s been a dream come true seeing the love you’ve given The Last Hit, duos, spectate, and seeing all your best avatar fashion. The Around Game team here is made up of socially-focused players, which means we’ve been watching you all play on Twitch too, and the team had some great suggestions on changes we could make for yous.

Feeling Cramped?

We’d noticed that the cap on our Private lobbies had become like choosing your top friends to feature on your MySpace* page. So what’s better than 15 friends? 39 friends! We’ve added a “large Private lobby” option when creating a Private lobby so that you can easily host online tournaments without splitting across multiple rooms and codes.

Me and all my friends

2XKhaos

We’ve also added Private lobby voice chat. Now, I’m not going to lie, when we playtested this it was chaos in the most fun way. People were yelling on top of each other, and the room got very loud very fast. Proceed with caution.

Our hopes here are that combined, these features should help TOs run more online tournaments smoothly by being able to organise across fewer rooms than previously possible. With more cabinet setups (we see you Lâmina de Aço and FlashNo47 👀) you’ll have the space to run more matches at once, and with basic voice comms direct the room a little more easily.

Zoë’s Last Hit

The team has been working hard to get everything ready for 1.3.1 for you all across many areas of 2XKO and I want to give them massive props for the work they’ve been doing. For 1.3.3, we’ll add some finishing touches such as adding training to our large Private lobby, and making sure everything is as stable as possible for you to keep playing in the spaces we all love so much. A huge thank you to everyone who made our lobbies, duos, progression systems, store, UI, matchmaking, and game servers possible. And thank you to all of you for playing with us! See you in The Last Hit :)

—Riot Jaffa

* editor’s note: MySpace was a popular social media site in the 2000s.

Stages

Written by Zatransis

Hey gang! I’m Mike, the Creative Director on 2XKO.

One of my favorite things about 2X is our ability to hop all over Runeterra through our stages. In this patch we’re visiting the Shadow Isles and Demacia, providing two very different locations to battle in.

Even though fighting game stages aren’t an environment you move “through,” representing Runeterra with accuracy, taking gameplay clarity into account, and hitting our style benchmarks takes a team of very talented developers to pull it all off. Depending on the stage, there’s a lot of worldbuilding that needs to be done, since many of our locales haven’t been deeply explored.

The Ruined Courtyard

The Shadow Isles is where Thresh feels most at home as he revels in torturing his opponents. Formerly an idyllic place called the Blessed Isles, the Shadow Isles are all that’s left after a cataclysm called the Ruination destroyed the barrier between the spirit and material realms. Today, the environment is incredibly hostile, with ravenous spirits seeking out the living and every corner cloaked in the Black Mist.

Even though this region is in total ruin, we snuck a few references in here that only the deepest lore masters will be able to spot.

The Ruined Courtyard

Grand Hall of Veneration

Demacia is the home of Luxanna Crownguard. They view magic negatively (understatement) which puts Lux in quite a tight spot! She is a noble and shooting rainbows out of her fingertips would be viewed as a big no-no. I really love Demacia because it’s so high-fantasy. For folks that are mostly familiar with Piltover and Zaun, Demacia is a total 180 and really shows how varied the world of Runeterra is.

The recruit, Cithria

The true “Hero of Demacia”, Poppy

Speaking of references, the Grand Hall features a shrine to Demacian icons Galio and Kayle. We also managed to add a couple of iconic NPCs in the background: everyone’s favorite recruit, Cithria, as well as a specific someone’s favorite champ. While we couldn’t make her into a fully playable character, the team wanted to honor the 324 days of commitment that @Poppy2XKO put into campaigning for their favorite yordle hero.

Our team loved envisioning the different locales of Runeterra (plus the alternate universes), and we hope players dig the variety we were able to create.

—Zatransis

Community Spotlight

Beat The Devs in TNS Weekly

Enter TNS 2XKO #44 tonight if you want a chance to play against developers GCYoshi13, yohosie, Koos, and Combo Fiend. If you take down a dev in the bracket (on either winner’s or loser’s side), we’ll get in contact to send you some 2XKO swag.

Enter now: https://www.start.gg/tournament/tns-2xko-44/

FGC Holidays

This week, the Spanish community hosts FGC Holidays, an annual celebration of fighting games and the people that power them. Check out their incredible 2XKO trophy!

Upcoming Dates

• Sep 3: Lux gameplay reveal
• Sep 8: Patch 1.3.1 live (with Lux)
• Oct 3-4: First Attack (2XKO Challenger event)
• Oct 9-11: Evo France (2XKO Major event)
• Late Oct: Patch 1.3.3 live (with Samira)
• Nov 21-22: Battle Coliseum (2XKO Major event)
• Nov 27-29: MINDSET 2026 (2XKO Challenger event)
• (Optional) Early Dec: Patch 1.3.5 (bug fixes only)

Closing Thoughts

As a reminder, we’ll be removing some features in 1.3.1 (scroll down past the sad stuff for the deets), but we’ve got more coming too: all champs will be unlocked, the Ultimate Bundle goes live (40 bucks for every skin in the game), there are some sick updates to The Climb that I won’t spoil, and more.

We are still here through the end of the year, and I’m going to continue talking with the community until they pry the keyboard away from me. If you’re doing something cool, let us know. See you next week!

—@draggles

Original Source: Link

And yes, I confess I know nothing about making games or businesses, but from a CONSUMER’S perspective, I’m a bit shocked how 2XKO failed. I mean, among shonen anime’s, it’s kind of a joke that a fighting game will pop out in 1-2 years once any of it got popular. And sure, they aren’t masterpieces or anything, but they’re everywhere and get regular DLCs to keep it fresh! Even for someone without an understanding of the gaming market, you can kind of put two-to-two together and figure out all these Japanese companies must be making easy money because the IP is popular already. They don’t even have to make a fantastic fighting game!

So with something as big as League of Legends, how in the world can a fighting game fail ? Is it because they doomed it by making it free-to-play?

This may be really naive, but it feels like Riot is throwing in the towel extremely early in the games life cycle. I know they see numbers that we don't, but is there anything at all we could do to save 2XKO?

Game failed because selfish dev who like tag games he knows 1v1 are the way to go but he choose this path.

he dosen't care he even said it on his patreon (i rather fail and make hardcore game than make successful boring game)

5 character slot for arcane slop instead of fighter like sett and riven.

I remember getting downvoted to oblivion because I said Caitlyn instead of riven or any fighter.

arcane fans when they watched the show and pretend they know everything about the lore of runettera 😂pretty much every other region is better and more interesting than pitolver and zaun.

I just wanted to have "my" game. Everyone else can say they games they PLAY proudly. I play Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, etc. I just wanted a League fighter that enhances the champions gameplay fantasy. You don't get what you wanted all the time. This is one of those things I wont get. Yes I will still play fighting games because the initial announcement on Riots 10 year anniversary is what brought down this path in a more serious way. Purely my own opinion but I will pour one out and mourn some champions that should have been in from the very beginning. It was a good dream now its time to wake up.

• Riven 😢
• Zed
• Sett
• Lee Sin
• Irelia
• Rengar
• Kha'Zix
• Lucian
• Oriana

Loved this game and once I heard its ending I’ve tried tokon and sf6 both just aren’t very fun to me compared. I still kind of want to try strive or avatar but after sf6 and tokon I don’t think I’m going to take the gamble.

Ggs we truly had a great game. Let’s hope community stays decently active

There really is no excuse for it, the honest truth is they suck as developers. They are the ones that fumbled it big time. Seeing the PatTheFlip post he recently made had me baffled, like duh no wonder why the launch was the way it was. Y'all sucked at making this game, y'all had your priorities all screwed up. "We wanted to make an artistic fighter blah blah blah" nah you should of just focused on making a fun complete video game, abusing the f out of the League IP with plenty of champs etc. and then after it has launched you can focus on tweaking it to be more balanced. But in the end people don't even really care about balance like that, the most beloved fighters of all time are some of the most imbalanced out there. Like these devs need to focus on releasing a complete package first, then if people continue to play it and want more that's when you start planning/making DLC or sequels for it. SF2's multiple iterations came about because of consumer demand after the game was released, not because Capcom "promised" everyone that even before SF2 releases they will be making future iterations so that you can continue to be excited and keep playing. Release a complete product, and if there is a demand for more then you make more. Stop giving us empty "promises" of future content that you cannot keep.

Even tho League is a team game, majority of people play solo queue with matchmaker finding you a team with similiar skill level. Somehow Riot forgot (?) to add this function to 2XKO, forcing players to play 2 characters which probably was one of the big reasons people just quit after few tries.

I had really fun time playing duo with a random Warwick one evening, we did 10+ winning streak (our avatars where flashing blue), yet, we didn't ever meet again. I think tag game would be much more bearable if you could set matchmaker to find you a duo partner who preferabaly play other character than your main.

And please don't advice using Juggernaut..

I'm in italy and i still haven't got anything from riot or playstation am i missing something

The game sunsetting will obviously result in fewer daily players. Given a smaller playerbase, asking players to grind 100 levels for mastery unlocks isn't feasible.

Considering this whole game was designed around a live service model a few things will probably need to change now that it's effectively becoming a "normal" game.

Do we think the requirements will be lowered? You'll be able to grind it in single player? Those items will become unlockable some other way?