After cutting half of 2XKO’s team less than 30 days from launch, I have to ask: how can any of us get behind a new Riot game ever again?

Riot Games is “downsizing” a substantial number of developers from the team that has been working on 2XKO, the fighting game that only launched less than a month ago. Roughly 80 staff will be either transferred to other teams at Riot, or laid off with six months’ severance pay.

In a statement posted on the Riot Games website, 2XKO executive producer Tom Cannon broke the news to the public. Cannon wrote that following the console release “overall momentum hasn’t reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term,” despite enticing a core audience of dedicated players.

This “smaller, focused” team will be focusing on key improvements to the game, according to Cannon. Additional plans will seemingly be shared soon, though it’s worth noting this statement comes shortly after a post by game director Shaun Rivera stated the game’s systems were: “unfortunately making the game feel way too sharp and overwhelming for some players”, indicating significant gameplay changes in the near future.

Cannon’s post continues, reassuring fans 2XKO’s competitive circuit would continue as planned, thanking those on the team impacted by this decision, and pledging to continue communicating about “how things are progressing”.

On social media, 2XKO developers hit by these cuts shared the news and expressed their disappointment. Patrick Miller, who spent a decade working on 2XKO, revealed he was laid off with 30-minutes’ notice yesterday. As was lead champion designer Alex Jaffe, who spent eight years working on the title, senior character artist David Bolton, and many others.

Riot, speaking to PC Gamer, said that the 80 staff impacted is not an exact nor final figure, as some laid off staff will be able to find other positions at Riot Games following these cuts. Content Creator Rooflemonger also claims to have been told that a follow-up statement by Riot will go into the specifics of the “focuses of 2XKO moving forward”, and “nothing they have committed to is going away”.

How exactly 2XKO will continue to, let’s say, release five champions in 2026 as previously established (more than competitors like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8) with its team cut in half remains unclear. How Riot expects to retain the same scope of development is puzzling. Eurogamer contacted Riot Games for clarification on how exactly this would pan out, and was referred to the aforementioned statement and its mention that additional communication is coming.

These layoffs raise questions about the confidence of Riot Games when it comes to newer projects. The decisions cannot be discussed without considering the past few years of releases – and cancellations – at the company.

These cuts to the 2XKO team echo Riot’s 2024 decision to layoff vast swathes of the Legends of Runeterra team, sunsetting the game’s development and pivoting it towards a PvE model. According to CEO Dylan Dajeda, the game hadn’t: “performed as well as we [needed] it to, despite our best efforts”. That same year, Riot Games shuttered its Riot Forge publishing arm, with Dajeda writing that the company didn’t “view this as core to our strategy moving forward.”

Let’s not forget Hytale, a game Riot Games had invested millions of dollars into, before cancelling the project and winding down Hypixel Studios in June of last year. Hytale would be acquired by Hypixel co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme in November, and not even three months later release into Early Access to reach a concurrent player count at launch of around 2.8 million players.

For the sake of fairness, Riot Games is certainly capable of great decisions, and employs many talented developers. League of Legends remains a juggernaut in its genre, Valorant both on PC and consoles remains a smash hit for the company, and Teamfight Tactics doesn’t receive the praise it deserves despite being a major, persistent cash cow for the publisher. That severance package is also very generous, so I don’t want to paint Riot unfairly here. It’s a business, after all.

It’s also worth applauding the fact 2XKO was in development for almost a decade. While the team size has shifted over the years from its R&D period to the game we have today, funding a fighting game and paying for American salaries for such a vast amount of time would have been a substantial investment. Having the faith in your team, so much faith to support a total top-to-bottom redesign from a 1v1 fighter to a 2v2 tag fighter a few years ago, does take guts. Let it not be said that Riot isn’t willing to make big bets on underdogs – 2XKO is anything but an industry-trend led product.

But in terms of what sort of audience its games will attract, and the company’s ability to stick with them, there’s an obvious disconnect with reality. 2XKO is a great game, made by people clearly knowledgeable about what fighting game fans want. Ask any of those fans how vast the audience appeal of a 2v2 tag fighter is, though, and the answer will be unanimous: it’s a niche market.

What’s especially painful is, there’s probably not a worse time to make such cuts. Riot Games has, through funding such a lengthy development process, done the hard part. It has paid for a bold new video game. But pulling such a substantial amount of staff from the game just weeks after release is essentially an ambulance siren to all casual players – the crowd seemingly missing from the picture here. I appreciate we’re talking about spending millions more on a non-certain bet, and I imagine there could be a big red number on some balance sheet in Los Angeles somewhere. But hell, you built this thing and invested millions already – why take the bat to it now?

Taking a glass-half-full perspective, keeping 80 staff on 2XKO does imply there’s still hope from upper management the team can turn things around. But anyone with any familiarity with the live service market knows that casual, fair-weather players can smell bad news a mile away. It does not instil confidence. Live service is a battle for people’s time, not just their money, and seeing such cuts when a game comes out may prove repellent.

What needs to happen in my view is clear. We know there’ll be future communications about the future of 2XKO soon. This needs to happen very soon. There must be a pledge that 2XKO will still have support beyond 2026. Games like Fallout 76, Warframe, and Rainbow Six Siege prove that a rough start is not necessarily fatal. Some longevity and stability can attract interest.

Fighting game fans are already pretty sad about these cuts, largely because many of the impacted developers were pulled from fighting game communities in the US. It’s like trying to support a local pub after your best mate was fired, it leaves a sour taste for the most entrenched. For casuals, for whom this news could be the first major thing they hear about the game, it’s an appetite killer. For League of Legends fans, they’ve gone through similar events before. The discussion must – must – be refocused on how the game is absolutely not dead ASAP.

Ultimately, I’m worried on two fronts. I’m primarily concerned for the developers, who made an excellent fighting game and were laid off because growth projections from corporate didn’t match reality, or something equally video games in 2026, but I’m also concerned that this pattern of missteps will result in long-lasting consequences for future Riot projects. And affect more developers, in turn.

What is a potential player who is excited for, let’s say, the upcoming Riot Games MMO meant to think when they see that the company is so eager to pull the plug on live service games if they don’t immediately shake the genre to its core? What is someone who spent £100 on 2XKO Arcane cosmetics meant to feel when prompted to spend money on future Riot ventures?

If Riot Games wants to reignite community confidence in its games, it needs to actually hunker down and release a new one without throwing it down the drain so soon. Creating a live service game is already a nightmare, but this approach threatens to sour the well for not only 2XKO, but future projects in the works there.