The live service space is brutal — and I imagine that cracking it is even harder when you're a fighting game.

Fairly high expectations were placed upon 2XKO when it was first announced and eventually released into early access on PC. A free-to-play fighting game felt like a bold step forward for the genre — and being based on League of Legends, it had serious weight behind it in terms of brand recognition.

But it just never seemed to stick. The tag brawler released for PS5 in January of this year, and it was only a matter of weeks before we heard about the development team being downsized.

Despite Riot Games reassuring players that it would remain focused on adding to and improving 2XKO, the writing was on the wall. If it couldn't start attracting more players at a relatively rapid pace, then it wouldn't last.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the numbers simply never increased. And now, Riot Games has confirmed that active development on 2XKO will cease at the end of 2026.

A refreshingly transparent statement from the team reads:

"Over the last few months, we’ve been monitoring 2XKO’s trajectory closely, and what we’ve seen is painting a clear, consistent picture: while a lot of you jumped in to try the game and there's an incredible community that plays every day, we haven’t seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability."

It should be stressed that 2XKO will remain online for the foreseeable future — it's not getting shut down or anything like that. It just won't be receiving any additional support in the form of updates and DLC.

A "final bug fix patch" will drop in December, and that'll be that.

But before then, update 1.3.1, which is out in September, will add Lux as a new character. A new cosmetic bundle will be made available for purchase as well, priced at $39.99 / £33.99 / €39.99.

This DLC pack will include "all skins, skin chromas, and taunts for every champion up to and including Lux, plus all currently-released finishers".

So basically, it's giving players a way to buy everything in one big package.

Another patch, arriving in October, will add Samira as the game's final character. Players who bought the aforementioned bundle will unlock the newly added stuff at no extra cost.

"For now, we’re focused on leaving 2X in a great spot. Then, we’ll head back into the R&D lab, where we’ll take time to learn and work on how we come back stronger for the next swing at the next genre," the blog post concludes.

Did you ever give 2XKO a shot? Did you stick with it? Are you sad to see it ending development? Tag someone in the comments section below.