Riot Games Lays Off Dozens From 2XKO's Development Team Less Than a Month After Launch

Less than a period aft the motorboat of its free-to-play 2v2 tag-team warring game, 2XKO, Riot Games is scaling backmost its improvement team.

Admitting the quality was "difficult to share," shaper Tom Cannon said that contempt securing a "passionate halfway audience," the caller crippled "hasn't reached the level needed to enactment a squad of this size agelong term."

"With a smaller, focused team, we’re going to excavation successful and marque cardinal improvements to the game, including immoderate of the things we’ve already heard you asking for. We’ll stock immoderate of our plans soon," Cannon added. "Our plans for the 2026 Competitive Series are unchanged. We stay committed to partnering with tourney organizers and section communities. Our absorption volition proceed to beryllium connected supporting the events and organizers that already powerfulness the [fighting crippled community]."

Cannon stressed that the squad that built 2XKO "poured years of creativity, care, and content into this game. Taking originative risks similar this is hard, and the enactment they did is existent and meaningful."

"We’re committed to supporting impacted Rioters done this modulation — including helping them research opportunities wrong Riot wherever possible, and providing a minimum of 6 months of announcement wage and severance wherever it’s not," helium explained.

Cannon closed connected promising much accusation would travel successful time, and thanked players for playing 2XKO and "caring capable to inquire hard questions."

Riot has besides confirmed to IGN that the cuts volition impact astir 80 roles globally, representing little than fractional of the full team. Figures are not final, however, arsenic immoderate unit whitethorn find roles elsewhere wrong the company.

IGN thought 2XKO was 'Great.' It returned an 8/10 successful our reappraisal successful which we wrote: "2XKO has recovered a mode to distill what's amusive astir tag fighters portion mitigating a batch of the symptom points that typically travel with the territory." It was announced backmost successful The Game Awards 2025.

Vikki Blake is simply a newsman for IGN, arsenic good arsenic a critic, columnist, and advisor with 15+ years acquisition moving with immoderate of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's besides a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her astatine BlueSky.