this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
39 points (100.0% liked)

Games

21226 readers
316 users here now

Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.

Rules

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
jack@hexbear.net
RiotDoll@hexbear.net
39
Riot Games lays off roughly 80 employees from 2XKO team (www.gamedeveloper.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by RondoRevolution@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Riot is yet again proving they are completely incapable of doing anything that is not League of Legends, TFT or Valorant.

I just started playing the game after it launched on consoles because they need their bullshit anticheat for a fucking fighting game for some reason, so I can't run it on Linux, and not even a month after the official release they are already firing half the development team.

This is smelling awfully like another LOR, which didn't die because the game is "too fair" or whatever other bullshit g*mers say about the game, but rather because Riot is literally incapable of doing the bare minimum to ensure their own game's success, be it doing actual advertising, both irl and in other related games they own like the fucking League client, or doing joint events between their games, or not asking for an arm a leg for a single skin like it is right now on 2XKO.

How can this multi billion dollar company be so incompetent?

Devs talking about being fired:

top 24 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

It is a good fighting game, but fighting games are small enough it was never going to make league type money

[–] RondoRevolution@hexbear.net 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, feels like they just set crazy expectations considering it took 10 years of development with multiple internal reboots plus the fact that they think the game is gonna be a success with no marketing and advertisement just because they are Riot. Fighting games are growing but it is still a niche. They could at least had waited 6 months before doing this bizarre shit, what a way to tell everyone you don't care about your newly released game clown

[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 1 points 5 hours ago

Like, honestly, if they made a subspace emisary for the game. Or of they made a platformer fighter like awsomenauts out of the engine it would be peak. Try playing teemo and tell me dropping him in any mega man game wouldn't be transcendent. They have the bones for something so I see how it came to be a good idea. I just can't imagine how the played to scope the project

[–] Kefla@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm the target audience for this game. I was literally waiting for it to release because I've been wanting to play it. Literally the first time I've ever even heard its official title it's because the game already released and they've already given up on it? Holy fuck what a catastrophe.

[–] RondoRevolution@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

That sucks. I knew something was a bit off when most of the character guides I found on youtube had very low views. I've been having fun playing it, but this feels weird even for Riot, they usually wait a bit before doing this kind of stuff. I also heard it was the game with the biggest number of competitors in Frosty Faustings, which makes this even weirder, because it shows there's at least competitive potential, which is super important for fighting games. Idk, they must have set some crazy high expectations for this game.

[–] Goblinmancer@hexbear.net 4 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

LOR at least lasted like 4 years before things went downhill and it end up being a sorta gacha roguelike deckbuilder.

Cant help but feel arcane being merged into canon killed LOR by making the worldbuilding irrelevant

[–] RondoRevolution@hexbear.net 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Even then, LOR is still around just no one plays PVP anymore from what I saw, the only reason I don't play it anymore is because my phone is basically a glorified brick rn, cause I really like that game.

Cant help but feel arcane being merged into canon killed LOR by making the worldbuilding irrelevant

Nah, stuff there is still balling. Nidalee and Janna redesigns are actual fire for example. The actual reason is that they did jack shit for marketing and advertising, like they expect the game to just be the hugest shit imaginable just because they are Riot, barely had a competitive scene from what I remember, which is something they seem to have learned for 2XKO at least, alongside with basically no cosmetics to buy. They complained the game wasn't making much money, but it basically had nothing to buy to begin with, the game needed more sleeves, more boards, more emotes, more card skins, hell even sell custom effects and win screens, 2XKO has that, even LOL now has that too from what I have seen. They do the barely minimum and expect it to just make them rivers of money.

[–] Goblinmancer@hexbear.net 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The only reason I even knew LOR is from people in other card games like Shadowverse complaining about how stupid expensive it is to make good decks.

Its wild how frugral Riot Games really is except for League and Valorant.

[–] RondoRevolution@hexbear.net 4 points 12 hours ago

Yeah and TFT too, that is also pretty big and considered a huge success, basically the only auto chess remaining.

[–] ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I didn't realize this launched! It spent so long in development I sort of thought it was just never going to actually come out.

[–] RondoRevolution@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah, honestly it felt like the quietest launch ever, almost no one was talking about it, it feels super weird.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Tbf the team made bland shit.

All they did was make ~~KoF~~ MvC with League of Legends characters. The entire game is derivative. They bring absolutely nothing to the table that gives 2XKO its own unique core identity.

They made a niche af fighting game and the result was what happens with all fighting games that aren't Street Fighter, player count decline after launch.

If I were running this project I'd have banned them from copying from other games and forced them to come up with sincerely unique ideas that haven't been done before. I also wouldn't have included a solos mode at all. The identity of the game would have been that you MUST team up with another player, you would play 1 character on the team and the fact that you have to synergise with your partner would become a huge component of skill in the game, on top of making it casual-friendly because the mistakes of duo play are much easier to bare than the personal accountability of getting absolutely bodied in solo play. Over optimisation of character combos would also not be a factor in multiplayer if each player can only play 1 character in a team because they're going to drop combos way more frequently than when 1 player is doing a practiced combo playing both characters simultaneously.

You're also not wrong about marketing not being there, but I suspect the marketing wasn't there because the leadership also recognised the same problems I recognise with the decisions that went into this project, so they decided not to support something they felt was going the wrong direction anyway.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

All they did was make KoF with League of Legends characters.

Can you explain this claim further? It seems to me like there's a fair amount to it that's very different from KoF.

If I were running this project I'd have banned them from copying from other games and forced them to come up with sincerely unique ideas that haven't been done before.

It's an extremely normal thing for a fighting game to borrow heavily from other fighting games, and much better titles do the same.

I also wouldn't have included a solos mode at all. The identity of the game would have been that you MUST team up with another player,

I think it would probably be very harmful to the game's market to de facto make many players share the steering wheel with strangers, since it's not like it's just simultaneous 2v2, it's a tag fighter.

on top of making it casual-friendly

Needing to account for the decisions of a stranger in a tag-fighter is not very casual friendly.

Over optimisation of character combos would also not be a factor in multiplayer if each player can only play 1 character in a team because they're going to drop combos way more frequently than when 1 player is doing a practiced combo playing both characters simultaneously.

This style of design has countless times over decades been shown to be harmful to fighting games for basically the same reason that pretzel inputs are now regarded as a bad thing to use in the basic design of the roster. You can't actually stop optimization this way, you just make it wildly less accessible to the general audience, making the curbstomping engaged in by more dedicated players even more exaggerated, and making it more of a pointless chore to get into competitively. Also, you can just change what optimal combos are able to achieve and it's usually pretty simple to do so, so you can apply a universal fix that doesn't fuck over the more casual audience from engaging with basic elements of the game reliably.

Having a few characters be very difficult to use is fine, even desirable to some, but one of the most important factors in fighting games is barrier of entry because having a healthy community is so important, beyond even its substantial importance in many other genres.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Can you explain this claim further? It seems to me like there's a fair amount to it that's very different from KoF.

I actually meant MvC3 and my brain just farted.

I think it would probably be very harmful to the game's market to de facto make many players share the steering wheel with strangers, since it's not like it's just simultaneous 2v2, it's a tag fighter.

Why? You share the steering wheel in every moba, you share the steering wheel in every hero shooter.

It would just be a team game where you play 1 character on the team. It would have its own individual identity as a fighting game that isn't like any other fighting game. The tag fighter they made is derivative as a solos game, it brings nothing to the table anyone hasn't done already. But as a duos game it shines. That's the identity it should have centred and made its entire thing.

Riot as a company would be all about team games in every genre, League, Valorant, 2XKO. They had this chance to make a fighter that is ONLY a team game and they chickened out.

Instead what they've made is a fighting game that will forever be niche, serving only the existing fighting game community and not attracting anyone outside of it because at the end of the day it's just like every other tag fighting game. If those games didn't attract and retain a new audience, 2XKO would not either.

This style of design has countless times over decades been shown to be harmful to fighting games for basically the same reason that pretzel inputs are now regarded as a bad thing to use in the basic design of the roster. You can't actually stop optimization this way, you just make it wildly less accessible to the general audience, making the curbstomping engaged in by more dedicated players even more exaggerated, and making it more of a pointless chore to get into competitively.

If this were true Smash wouldn't be wildly more popular than every single other fighting game. That's not because Smash is easier to succeed in at high level play, it's because it actually caters to an audience that aren't hardcore, while retaining the ability for high level play to exist.

Smash is more popular because the core mode, the heart of the game, is not competitive singles. The core mode of Smash is large scale party play with absolute chaos occurring to bring down the level of optimisation through randomness and complete bullshit so that the average person has a good time with it without learning practically anything at all, even if matched in lobbies with people that will stomp them despite the bullshit. This would be the same if singles were not the core mode, but instead duos were, the chaos and randomness of mistakes and nonsense would bring down the level of play and bring in an element of casualness that retains an audience of significantly lower skill players.

These games don't retain players outside of hardcore people because their primary modes are hardcore. Sakurai is apparently the only person that seems to understand this at all.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago

I actually meant MvC3 and my brain just farted.

Ah, okay, that's fair. I do think it also has meaningful differences from MvC3, but it's a much closer comparison

Why? You share the steering wheel in every moba, you share the steering wheel in every hero shooter.

I explain why, because in those games you are actually independent characters, which is not true in a tag fighter. Short of dying, you basically never need to actually sit out of the game in those games, much less get yanked into or out of being able to play by a teammate (idr which one this game does).

Instead what they've made is a fighting game that will forever be niche, serving only the existing fighting game community and not attracting anyone outside of it because at the end of the day it's just like every other tag fighting game. If those games didn't attract and retain a new audience, 2XKO would not either.

I expect League players have been playing it as well, insofar as anyone has been.

If this were true Smash wouldn't be wildly more popular than every single other fighting game.

Smash, mostly Melee and its derivative mods, are my favorite fighting games and specifically what I had in mind while I was saying it.

That's not because Smash is easier to succeed in at high level play, it's because it actually caters to an audience that aren't hardcore, while retaining the ability for high level play to exist.

But the thing is, modern Smash is an excellent example of a game that takes great pains to be extremely accessible in ways that your proposal fails to be. You do not need to practice and practice to engage with fundamental system mechanics in a pretty consistent manner, you simply do not. That is not true of a game with mandatory 2v2 because in that game, as I think you understand, team combos become a fundamental system mechanic. Another merit of MOBAs and hero shooters, incidentally, is that they let you have a pretty wide range of choices with what mechanics you want to engage with and how, which is part of why beginning semi-competitive players tend to like playing healers and such, because it's much more low-pressure and lets you mostly avoid a subset of what are otherwise critical skills (e.g. aim is typically way less important) while working on other fundamentals (like movement, communication, evasion, cooldown management if that applies, etc.)

Incidentally, other reasons for Smash being successful besides the Intellectual Property elephant in the room is the emphasis on customization (e.g. not forcing you to have more than two players) and on single player content (something that you cannot have in this format unless you propose having an AI play the other character). Making people need to play on a team is opposed to what makes Smash successful, and that's in a situation where being on a team with a stranger is more accessible and pleasant because it isn't a tag fighter.

[–] CriticalOtaku@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Nah, I disagree. 2xko’s the only game that’s come out recently to even come close to capturing the magic of Marvel vs. Capcom. It’s got the sauce, mostly because the devs (who are getting sacked now) are og fgc old heads who know tag and anime fighters. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but we were probably 1 or 2 balance patches away from something really special, like just tone down the combo length and we’re g dawg.

Like Sajam said, why can’t we just make sick ass fighting games? Why we gotta cater to the taste’s of the lowest common denominator all the time? Just cause something made with love and care goes into a small niche and won’t make gang busters, we gotta kill it?

(Also to be clear, your ideas sound cool, but I don’t think not taking an even more experimental approach is the issue here when rito is pulling the plug cause their $$160 Arcane skin packs aren’t selling)

[–] SnakeEyes@hexbear.net 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

We will always have the kusoge arena fighters, shoutout to my hero academia all justice

[–] CriticalOtaku@hexbear.net 2 points 3 hours ago

Idk arena fighters just don’t do it for me.

If they shut down the 2xko servers I’ll just go back to strive since I can’t stand street fighter’s shuffle dance footsies lol

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nah, I disagree. 2xko’s the only game that’s come out recently to even come close to capturing the magic of Marvel vs. Capcom.

Yeah that's the point though, it's derivative of it. They didn't make their own game, they wanted to make MvC3 again. Their favourite game. I misspoke in my other comment.

[–] CriticalOtaku@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I mean sure, but MvC3 with all the QoL stuff from the last few years of fighting games development sounds super appealing... to me.

Which is kinda the heart of the problem I'm trying to get at, just cause I'm not Saudi Arabia and I can't single-handedly fund rito games means that when through some miracle we do get something that only appeals to me and a handful of others nostalgic for the arcade days the execs are gonna pull the ripcord deeper-sadness

[–] RondoRevolution@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

All they did was make KoF with League of Legends characters. The entire game is derivative. They bring absolutely nothing to the table that gives 2XKO its own unique core identity.

I never played KoF despite being from Latin America, so I can't compare it to that, but even if the game is very derivative I genuinely think it is fun outside of a few things, tho I'm super casual at it at this time. I do think the ability to play duos is very unique right now, which is not something you can do on other current fighting games (at least that I know of), it allows for me and my brother to have tons of fun playing together, almost all the time it is double the joy when we win and half the frustration when we lose.

you would play 1 character on the team and the fact that you have to synergise with your partner would become a huge component of skill in the game, on top of making it casual-friendly because the mistakes of duo play are much easier to bare than the personal accountability of getting absolutely bodied in solo play.

Wouldn't that be hard to play without communication? I could also see it being actually way more frustrating since the skill gap between you and your random teammate could be rather big. I played a lot of League (nearly 12 years I think) and that feels like it would just introduce the bad part of League into this game.

You're also not wrong about marketing not being there, but I suspect the marketing wasn't there because the leadership also recognised the same problems I recognise with the decisions that went into this project, so they decided not to support something they felt was going the wrong direction anyway.

If it was the first time this was happening I could maybe agree, but this happened multiple times already with Riot, it's a pattern that I genuinely don't understand. First there was LOR and how they handled it very poorly, including with barely any advertising, then there was all the indie games third party companies did (I never played them but I heard they are quite cool), where you only knew they launched if you kept an eye on them because Riot sure as hell didn't advertise these games nearly enough, which was followed by simply cutting the whole thing off. It was directly related to League, yet I don't remember there being even a single ad inside the client at the time for these games, which would make sense to do since the majority of people that care about that universe are there, its genuinely baffling, its like they simply don't care and want these to fail.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I do think the ability to play duos is very unique right now, which is not something you can do on other current fighting games (at least that I know of), it allows for me and my brother to have tons of fun playing together, almost all the time it is double the joy when we win and half the frustration when we lose.

Yes and it should have been made the entire focal point of the game. It should have been the game's core identity but they were spineless and made a solos mode. The existence of solos prevents the game from being what it could be if Duos was the only mode available. Everyone plays solos instead and Duos becomes a niche side-story.

Wouldn't that be hard to play without communication? I could also see it being actually way more frustrating since the skill gap between you and your random teammate could be rather big. I played a lot of League (nearly 12 years I think) and that feels like it would just introduce the bad part of League into this game.

Yes but that's fine. The magic that happens when things go right and people synergise to pull off cool shit is VASTLY better than solos optimised combos. The game also has a damage problem, with character dying way too fucking fast, which feels bad, which would not exist if people were dropping combos more due to the synergy required.

I don't think communication is an issue, you don't have time to communicate in duos anyway. All cool shit that happens comes from two people wordlessly weaving stuff together after playing enough rounds with one another to learn the other person's playstyle and patterns.

[–] RondoRevolution@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Everyone plays solos instead and Duos becomes a niche side-story.

I'll have to disagree, I still see quite a bit of duos on casual lobby at least, but I haven't played a ton of ranked yet. On tournaments it seems to be a bit of a low representation, but Sonicfox and Inzem are playing duos and getting good results. There's also the twins from Japan that I keep hearing about.

The magic that happens when things go right and people synergise to pull off cool shit is VASTLY better than solos optimised combos.

While I agree it is super cool, a best of 3 set is not enough for that to happen to the majority of people, not even a best of 5 would be enough, ranked would be a mess specially on lower ranks. I could see it working for casual, but even then you would require people to keep playing together for a long set, and after that, all that effort goes to waste because you then get paired with someone else that plays differently.

The game also has a damage problem,

The devs agree with that and are going to tone that down from a video I saw talking about that.

I don't think communication is an issue, you don't have time to communicate in duos anyway.

I actually use communication quite a lot with my brother when playing so we don't end up coming in at the wrong time, don't end up wasting super and to use tag correctly. Tagging specially would just be super weird without communication and a common pain point when playing with randoms.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago

ranked would be a mess specially on lower ranks

Yes that is the point. It is a good thing for player retention.