Active development on 2XKO - the free-to-play fighting game from Riot Games - will end in December. This comes not even a year after the game's full release in January, as the company doesn't see "a path toward sustainability".

Announced on social media and through a lengthy blog post, the final patch for the game will be released in October. All in-game purchases made before the 20th August will be refunded by November, and servers will be kept online for the foreseeable future.

All announced major additions - such as the new characters Lux and Samira - will still be coming to the game. All the characters will be unlocked once development ends. You'll still be able to buy a big bundle containing almost all cosmetic items in the game for $39.99 / £33.99 / €39.99. In addition, ranked lobbies will be disabled, with skill-based casual matchmaking remaining the sole public online option.

In a section of the blog titled What was Riot's Goal with 2XKO?, it is stated that the hope was to address major problems present in the genre when development started. It reads: "While the genre progressed significantly in the last ten or so years, we believe 2X delivered on many of these promises."

However, it appears not enough people stayed with 2XKO despite its attempts at answering community woes: "Even within the genre, diehard tag fighter players loved 2XKO, but most other fighting game players struggled to find reasons to stick with the game," the post explains.

As for why active development is ending, the post continues by revealing that the game's performance - meaning revenue, player retention, and engagement - was "only a fraction" of what it would take for the game to be sustainable. This, according to the blog, made continuing active development "impossible."

Riot Games has not announced any layoffs for the 2XKO development team as of writing. Back in February, Riot Games eliminated roughly half of development roles on the game less than 30 days after its release. While many of these developers found other roles at Riot, others were laid off.

The game first started development almost a decade ago, starting off life as Project L when Tom and Tony Cannon from Radiant Entertainment joined Riot Games to start work on the fighting game. The game was officially revealed in 2019, and eventually released six years later to positive reviews.

It's sad news. 2XKO had a lot of potential, and the desire to entice casual players through duo play was an admirable one. This marks the second major free-to-play fighting game release (alongside Warner Bros' MultiVersus) to shut down after struggling to find a sizable audience. One has to wonder if the model can work in a genre that seems increasingly niche outside of its biggest series.