Riot Games Cuts Half of 2XKO Team Just Three Weeks After Launch

On February 9, 2026, executive producer Tom Cannon posted a blog entry to Riot Games' website with the kind of corporate language that rarely precedes good news. "After a lot of discussion and reflection, we are reducing the size of the 2XKO team," he wrote. The game had been out for exactly 20 days.

A spokesperson for Riot Games confirmed to Game Developer that approximately 80 workers were laid off, around half of the game's global development team. Some of those developers had worked on the project for the better part of a decade. One developer on Bluesky shared that they had been laid off with just 30 minutes of notice after working on 2XKO for a decade and spending 12 years at Riot.

A Decade in the Making

In 2016, Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, a fighting game studio founded by Tom and Tony Cannon. The team would spend a decade iterating on the game that would eventually become 2XKO. The project was first announced publicly in 2019 under the codename "Project L." It promised something new for the fighting game community: a tag team fighter set in the League of Legends universe, built by developers with serious credentials in competitive gaming. Tom Cannon, after all, co-founded the Evolution Championship Series (Evo), the largest fighting game tournament in the world.

Following a short closed beta test, it launched into early access in October 2025, and then hit 1.0 on January 20 with releases on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The game also launched Season 1 with new playable fighter Caitlyn on the same day, with plans for more characters to be introduced in future seasons.

The full launch came and went. Three weeks later, the cuts arrived.

What Went Wrong

Cannon's statement offered an explanation, though not an especially detailed one. "As we expanded from PC to console, we saw consistent trends in how players were engaging with 2XKO," he wrote. "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."

That phrasing, "passionate core audience," is doing a lot of work. It acknowledges that the game found players who liked it while conceding that not enough of them showed up. 2XKO isn't on Steam, so independent player count data isn't available, but cutting the team in half three weeks after launch tells its own story.

"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." — Tom Cannon, Executive Producer

A recurring answer among players is that the game was marketed as a casual fighting game, but its gameplay is actually very complex and punishing. Tag team fighters require players to learn multiple characters' movesets and manage assist calls, combo extensions, and partner swaps. That's a steep learning curve for casual players who might have been drawn in by familiar League of Legends champions.

2XKO has already had a bit of a rocky start with a full ranked reset taking place just a few days into the season, which disrupted competitive play almost immediately after launch. The timing of that issue, followed so quickly by layoff announcements, created a sense among players that the game was in trouble from the start.

The Fighting Game Market

The fighting game genre has always occupied a strange position in the industry. It commands devoted audiences and produces spectacular esports moments, but mainstream success remains elusive for most titles outside a handful of legacy franchises.

Street Fighter 6, Guilty Gear Strive, and Tekken 8 have raised the bar, and all three launched to strong receptions in recent years. But those games benefit from decades of brand recognition and established competitive scenes. 2XKO, despite its League of Legends connection, was asking players to invest in something new. The free-to-play model should have lowered that barrier, but it also meant Riot needed to monetize through cosmetics and battle passes rather than upfront purchases.

Some observers note that free-to-play live service fighting games have struggled to find sustainable audiences. MultiVersus faced similar challenges, and fighting game players historically haven't demonstrated the same willingness to spend on cosmetics as players in other genres.

Riot's Broader Contraction

These cuts don't exist in isolation. Riot Games has been reducing its workforce for two years now, part of a wider contraction across the video game industry.

On January 22, 2024, Riot Games announced a significant restructuring, leading to the layoff of 530 employees, which accounts for about 11% of the company's total workforce. The company also shut down Riot Forge, its indie publishing label. In October 2024, Riot Games executed another round of layoffs, this time affecting 32 employees, primarily from the League of Legends team.

From 2023 to 2026, Riot Games laid off approximately 608 employees across multiple departments. The company's parent, Tencent, has also pulled back investment across several Western studios in recent months. The video game industry experienced mass layoffs in a wave which began in 2022, peaked in January 2024, and began to ease off in 2025. An estimated 45,000 jobs were lost from 2022 to July 2025.

What Happens Now

Impacted workers will be given a chance to apply for jobs elsewhere within Riot Games. Those who cannot find other positions will be offered a minimum of 6 months pay and severance. That's a more generous package than many tech layoffs provide, though it doesn't change the outcome for the people losing their jobs.

Riot says its plans for the 2026 Competitive Series are "unchanged," and that it will continue to support "events and organizers that already power the FGC." 2XKO isn't shutting down; rather, Riot says these layoffs will allow it to give the game "a more sustainable path forward."

The layoff announcement went viral within the fighting game community, earning the response of Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon, who urged players to support the title's former staff. Evo champion Justin Wong posted on X: "This sucks, and hopefully 2XKO comes back super strong to make Riot possibly grow the team again."

The 2XKO community believes the announcement has damaged any chances of the game taking off. Announcing layoffs publicly, especially this early, sends a signal to prospective players that the game may not be around long. Whether Riot can rebuild confidence while operating with half the staff it had last month remains an open question. The developers who remain have their work cut out for them, and the players who stuck around will be watching to see if "sustainable" means growing or simply surviving a little longer.