Riot Is Ending 2XKO's Active Development in December, and Every Purchase Is Being Refunded

We did not expect Riot Games to be the first big publisher to fold its hand this year, but here we are. On August 20 the company announced that active development on 2XKO, its free to play League of Legends tag fighter, ends in December 2026, less than a year after the game's full launch in January. The wording matters: this is not a server shutdown. The game stays playable online on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S after December, offline play is untouched, and Riot is refunding every single purchase made on or before August 20.

The reason is the one you would guess. In Riot's own words, "we haven't seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability." Engagement stayed relatively flat even after the larger updates, and the game costs substantially more to run than it brings in. Plenty of people tried it. Not enough stayed.

What happens between now and December

2XKO is not going quietly. All champions were unlocked for everyone the day of the announcement, and most cosmetics are being bundled up too. Lux, the next champion, still arrives on September 8 in patch 1.3.1, the same update that removes ranked play. Samira, the final champion, follows in October with patch 1.3.3. The Competitive Series runs through November, and a last bug fix patch, 1.3.5, lands in December before the team steps away for good. Cosmetics you already own stay yours, and avatar items become unlockable with in game currency.

The refunds are the genuinely unusual part. Anyone who spent money on KO Points or the Starter Edition before the cutoff gets it all back, automatically, to the original payment method. Riot expects most PC refunds to clear within two weeks and everything to be done by November, while console refunds go through Sony and Microsoft's usual channels. For a live service wind down, it is about as player friendly as these things get.

Our take

The fighting game scene 2XKO launched into was brutal. This has been a stacked year for the genre, with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls arriving in August as another team based tag fighter and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves deep into its third season of monthly characters. Tag fighters are famously hard to sustain, free to play tag fighters even more so, and 2XKO needed a huge, sticky audience to justify Riot scale spending. It found a passionate community instead of a massive one.

Credit where it is due, though. Ending development while keeping the servers up, unlocking everything, and refunding every cent is the opposite of the quiet delistings we usually cover. If you were ever curious about 2XKO, the strange truth is that right now is the best time to try it: the full roster is free, two more champions are still coming, and nobody is asking for your money anymore.