Riot just pulled the plug on active development for 2XKO, the League of Legends tag fighter that launched in January and is now getting the maintenance-mode treatment before its first birthday. Servers stay online beyond December 2026, offline mode works fine, and everyone who spent money on or before today gets a full refund while all fighters unlock for free. Two more champs—Lux and Samira—drop before the final bug-fix patch, then it's skeleton crew time.

Riot's own post admits the game pulled in curious players but never kept enough of them to justify the spend, echoing the February layoffs that already gutted the team. The FGC diehards liked the 2v2 assist system, yet the broader fighting-game crowd bounced hard. Now the studio is handing out refunds and promising to "figure out what more we can do" for TOs, competitors, and creators who stuck around.

This isn't a surprise after the post-launch bloodbath, but it's still a corpse-stomping reminder that even Riot can't force a niche fighter into mainstream numbers. Servers limping along is the polite version of "we're not deleting the files yet." Highguard is dead. We're pissing on the grave.