After years of development, a shaky launch, and layoffs a mere three weeks later, the inevitable came for Riot’s tag fighter 2XKO in August: shutdown of future development after this year, and refunds for everyone who had made in-game purchases up to that point.
In its announcement post, Riot admitted that it was unable to find the momentum to keep 2XKO sustainable, a sentiment that co-founder Marc Merrill echoed during a panel at PAX West this weekend. When asked about mistakes the developer has made over the years—while tangentially mentioning the tag fighter—Merill responded: “Well first of all, I wouldn’t characterise 2XKO as a mistake.”
Merrill says that following a meeting with EVO founders and 2XKO developers Tom and Tony Cannon , he and fellow Riot co-founder Brandon Beck “thought that there were a lot of opportunities in and around the competitive scene; thought that there were going to be benefits to the free-to-play model; thought the League IP could be incredibly cool both for League players and players in the FGC. And we delivered a game that’s beautiful, that took risks with the tag system, all sorts of stuff.”
But by Merrill’s own admission, getting a live service game out there with moderate attention is a big ask. “One of the challenges with free-to-play games and/or the live service model in general is unless you do something so incredible—especially in a really competitive world where 20,000+ games are launched on Steam and there’s an infinite amount of social media content and there’s an infinite amount of stuff to go watch on YouTube—you’re not just competing against games, you’re competing against everything.”
Merrill continued: “What we’re doing is competing for people’s attention and time and that’s a really high bar, and you have to get so many things right to get enough critical mass to build the community and really have it turn into something that can be sustainable over the long term. And 2XKO unfortunately, um, didn’t do that.”
It is a bummer to see 2XKO fall so hard on its face—though perhaps a fate anyone who’s spent enough time in the FGC could see clear as day, and I for one still do not understand what Riot was exactly expecting from a niche within a niche—but Merrill maintains that it’s “a great game,” and that “it doesn’t mean that the intention and desire to serve the FGC was not utterly in the hearts of the Cannon [brothers] and Rioters and us the entire time. But we’re not going to bat a thousand, we’re not going to get everything right.”
At the very least, Riot’s swing-and-a-miss with 2XKO apparently hasn’t deterred the developer from experimenting and expanding. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to take big swings. I know a lot of people are like, ‘Oh my god, I’m concerned about what this means for all sorts of other games.’ And it’s like, well, you shouldn’t be.” At the very least, it doesn’t seem like development on its mysterious MMO hasn’t ceased, so at least there’s that eh?