Marc Merrill Says 2XKO Wasn’t a Mistake Before Riot Ends Active Development in 2026

Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill says 2XKO was not a mistake, even though Riot plans to end active development on the League of Legends fighting game by the end of 2026. The company says it will keep 2XKO live and refund players, but Merrill argued that the project’s failure to build enough long-term momentum does not erase the work behind it.

Riot has confirmed the planned development cutoff in its 2XKO development announcement. During a PAX West 2026 panel, Greg Miller asked Merrill, who is also Riot’s co-chairman and CPO, how the company should describe 2XKO when looking back at its mistakes.

Merrill rejected the framing. “I wouldn’t characterize 2XKO as a mistake,” he said, linking the project to Tom and Tony Cannon, two of EVO’s four founders. Merrill, fellow Riot co-founder Brandon Beck, and the Cannon brothers saw an opportunity to serve the fighting game community by asking what a better experience for fighting game players could look like.

That vision included a free-to-play model, opportunities around competitive play, and the League of Legends IP for both existing League players and the fighting game community. Merrill specifically pointed to 2XKO’s tag system as one of the places where the team chose to take a chance.

“We delivered a game that’s beautiful, that took risks with the tag system and all sorts of stuff,” Merrill said. Those choices did not solve the larger problem of getting enough people to find the game and stay with it.

He described the free-to-play and live-service market as a contest for attention and time, with more than 20,000 games launching on Steam each year and a constant flow of social media and YouTube content competing for the same audience. “You’re not just competing against games, you’re competing against everything,” Merrill said.

In Merrill’s view, a game needs many pieces to land at once before it can build a community that lasts. 2XKO did not reach the critical mass needed to support a sustainable player base, even though Merrill still called it “a great game.”

The game’s difficult run also included layoffs less than three weeks after release. Riot announced in August that active development would end in December, while 2XKO would remain playable online and players would receive refunds for in-game purchases made up to that point.

Merrill said the result did not erase Riot’s intent to serve the live fighting game community. He also pushed back on the idea that 2XKO’s ending means Riot will stop taking risks elsewhere. The company will not get everything right, he said, but it will keep looking for ways to improve its games and has other projects in development.

Active development will end by the close of 2026, but 2XKO will remain playable, and Merrill says Riot’s willingness to take big swings is not going away.

What do you think about Merrill’s defense of 2XKO and Riot’s decision to keep taking risks? Share your thoughts in the comments, and follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.