I don't understand what Riot wants from 2XKO

Just three weeks after its grand 1.0 launch and console release, Riot has slashed the 2XKO team in half. Around 80 employees are out of a job, some of whom have been around since the game's beginning.

Why? According to the developer's own words, "As we expanded from PC to console, we saw consistent trends in how players were engaging with 2XKO. The game has resonated with a passionate core audience, but overall momentum hasn't reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term."

Translation: People aren't flooding to 2XKO. The ones who are? Many aren't sticking with it long enough to dump an egregious amount of money on its skins.

It's a damning assessment so early on into the game's life. Even factoring in its early access release on PC, 2XKO couldn't even make it half a year before Riot decided it wasn't doing good enough. The developer maintains that the journey isn't over, but forgive me if I can't help but feel like the final destination is fast approaching.

The thing is, I cannot fathom what Riot wants or wanted from 2XKO. What kind of momentum did it expect from what is essentially a niche within a niche?

Specialist

I love fighting games, I've been playing them most of my life. I attend tournaments and my locals and try to stay as actively involved as I can, even when I'm not playing. But I also recognise they're not the absolute gangbusters they once were. Street Fighter and Tekken still do moderately well for themselves. Mortal Kombat finds an ample casual audience with each new release, and anime fighters like Guilty Gear Strive continue to pump out characters and content.

But they're not shooters. They're not MOBAs. The FGC is strong, but relatively speaking it's also small. They're intricate beasts where getting good involves studying frame data, punishers, and overcoming knowledge checks without any teammates to point fingers at when things go wrong. It's not exactly the most accessible genre.

That alone pushes fighting games into a niche. But make it a tag fighter, adding a second character you have to learn and essentially doubling your workload? It stuffs the game even further into that specialised box.

It was never going to have folks going to it like a moth to a flame. It can be a tough sell even to the FGC, let alone casuals or future fighting game fans peering in and looking for their first foray into the genre. Was Riot expecting Street Fighter level of fame out of the gate—a fighter that has almost 40 years of refinement and evolution behind it? Surely not, because that would be a very stupid thing to expect.

I do have to wonder if it was expecting a similar phenomenon to what it saw with Valorant. A game that waded into the territory Counter Strike had held down for so long—with a little corner inhabited by Rainbow Six Siege—and almost immediately cemented itself as solid competition. It's a game still going strong five years down the line, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Counter-Strike is also, you know, one of the most played games on the daily. With far more transferable skills across other shooters (and videogames in general). Valorant was always going to be a lower barrier of entry both executionally and mentally.

Even outside of any expectations, 2XKO is a game stuck in a weird limbo where the group it appeals to is disastrously small. It's not approachable enough to reel in the wealth of League players or Arcane fans, while transferring over its more unsavoury practices that are an immediate turn-off to the FGC—like ridiculously expensive skin bundles and grinding to unlock characters.

Combine all that with a painfully small roster (which feels even more claustrophobic when you gotta pick two of 'em) and it doesn't surprise me that 2XKO has struggled to come blazing out of the gate. But it also feels like Riot hasn't even given it a chance to fix up first.

Improvements are coming, but I can't see how announcing that in the same breath as putting half your team out of work is going to pick up the momentum Riot is so desperately craving. It feels more like a death knell, one that is understandably going to make its "passionate core audience" apprehensive to dedicate themselves to the game financially.

Maybe we'll find out exactly what Riot is expecting out of 2XKO when it shares its plans. When? "Soon." Let's hope we at least get through a single season of the game and a sizeable roster before any more downsizing threatens to kill the game off entirely.