Riot Games co-founder, co-chairman, and Chief Product Officer (CPO) Marc Merrill does not view 2XKO as a mistake. He explained that a game's polish must be distinguished from building a sustainable scale as a live-service title.
On September 4 (local time), Merrill took the stage at PAX West 2026 Storytime in Seattle. When host Greg Miller reflected on Riot's 20-year history and asked how he defines "mistakes" while bringing up 2XKO, Merrill responded, "First of all, I wouldn't characterize 2XKO as a mistake."
He traced back to meeting the brothers Tom and Tony Cannon, co-founders of the Evolution Championship Series (EVO). He explained that the starting point of the project was to create a better competitive environment and online experience for fighting game players, while bridging the free-to-play model and the League of Legends IP to the fighting game community.
He evaluated, "We delivered a game that's beautiful and took risks in multiple areas, including the tag system." However, he pointed out that free-to-play games and live services must achieve remarkably outstanding results, citing an environment where over 20,000 games are released on Steam each year alongside an endless stream of content on social media and YouTube.
Merrill said, "What we're competing against is people's attention and time, and that bar is extremely high." To build a community and grow it into a long-term sustainable service, a game must satisfy many conditions to secure critical mass, but 2XKO failed to reach that stage. He added, however, that this does not mean 2XKO was not a great game.
Riot Games previously announced on August 21 that active development on 2XKO will end in late 2026. The studio plans to wrap up remaining content and feature improvements, aiming for a final bug-fix patch in December. Servers will remain operational afterward, and the game will continue to be offered free-to-play on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Purchases made prior to August 21 are being processed for refunds.
Merrill also drew a line regarding the impact 2XKO's outcome might have on other projects. He said, "You can't get everything right. But that doesn't mean we aren't proud of this game or that we won't take big risks in the future." He added that fans need not worry about other games, noting that Riot has many projects in the pipeline.
