These layoffs make people wonder how confident Riot Games is about its newer games. We can’t talk about these decisions without thinking about what has happened with the company’s games in the last few years, including games that were started and then stopped.
These cuts to the 2XKO team are similar to what happened in 2024 when Riot laid off many people from the Legends of Runeterra team. They stopped developing that game and changed it to a different kind of game. The CEO, Dylan Dajeda, said that game didn’t do as well as they hoped, even though they tried their best. In the same year, Riot Games also closed down its Riot Forge publishing part, with Dajeda saying it wasn’t a main part of their plans anymore.
Let’s not forget Hytale, a game Riot Games put millions of dollars into. They ended up canceling the project and closing Hypixel Studios last June. Hytale was then bought back by one of its original creators, Simon Collins-Laflamme, in November. Less than three months later, it came out in an early version and had about 2.8 million players right away.
To be fair, Riot Games does make good decisions sometimes and has many talented people working for them. Their game League of Legends is still very popular, and Valorant is a big hit on computers and game consoles. Teamfight Tactics also makes a lot of money for them, even if it doesn’t get as much praise. The severance pay for those laid off is also very good, so I don’t want to make Riot look completely bad. It is a business, after all.
It’s also good that 2XKO was being worked on for almost ten years. Even though the team size changed over the years, paying for a fighting game and American salaries for such a long time must have cost a lot of money. Having so much trust in their team, enough to completely change the game from a 1-on-1 fight to a 2-on-2 tag team game a few years ago, shows courage. It’s clear that Riot is willing to take chances on games that aren’t just following trends, and 2XKO is one of those.
But when it comes to what kind of people will play their games and if the company will stick with those games, there seems to be a problem with what’s really happening. 2XKO is a good game, made by people who clearly know what fighting game fans want. But if you ask those fans how many people would be interested in a 2-on-2 tag team fighting game, they would all say it’s a small group of players.
What’s especially tough is that this is probably the worst time to make these cuts. Riot Games already did the hard part by paying for such a long development process. They paid for a new video game. But taking so many people off the game just weeks after it came out is like sounding an alarm to all the casual players, who seem to be missing from the picture here. I know we’re talking about spending millions more on something that might not work out, and I can imagine there’s a big red number on some financial report in Los Angeles. But you built this thing and already put millions into it, so why stop now?
Looking at the bright side, keeping 80 people on 2XKO means that the company leaders still hope the team can make things better. But anyone who knows about games that are always online knows that casual players can sense bad news from far away. This doesn’t make people feel confident. Being successful with online games is about getting people to spend their time, not just their money, and seeing these cuts when a game first comes out might scare people away.
What I think needs to happen is clear. We know there will be more news about 2XKO’s future soon. This needs to happen very soon. There must be a promise that 2XKO will still be supported after 2026. Games like Fallout 76, Warframe, and Rainbow Six Siege show that a bad start doesn’t always mean the end. If a game shows it will last and be stable, it can attract interest.
Fans of fighting games are already quite sad about these cuts, mostly because many of the affected developers were well-known in the fighting game communities in the US. It’s like trying to support your local bar after your best friend was fired; it leaves a bad feeling for those who are deeply involved. For casual players, who might be hearing this news for the first time, it makes them not want to play. For League of Legends fans, they’ve seen similar things happen before. The talk must, absolutely must, quickly change to show that the game is not dead.
In the end, I’m worried about two things. First, I’m worried for the developers who made a great fighting game but were laid off because the company’s growth predictions didn’t match what actually happened, or something like that. But I’m also worried that these kinds of mistakes will cause long-term problems for future Riot games and affect even more developers.
What should someone who is excited for, say, the upcoming Riot Games online role-playing game think when they see that the company is so quick to give up on online games if they don’t immediately become huge hits? What should someone who spent money on 2XKO items feel when they are asked to spend money on future Riot projects?
If Riot Games wants people to trust their games again, they need to really buckle down and release a new game without getting rid of it so soon. Making an online game that’s always running is already a huge challenge, but this way of doing things could spoil things not just for 2XKO, but for other games they are working on too.
