On 9th September, Riot Games’ fighting game 2XKO will release into its closed beta. The game, first announced officially in February 2024, would appear to the layperson as a quick turnaround. The reality for those who have kept their eyes peeled for any crumb of info about the game couldn’t be further from the truth.
Back in March 2016, Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, developers of forward-thinking fighter Rising Thunder. It’s here that whispers about a Riot fighting game first circulated. Then, in 2019, Riot Games revealed the then-called Project L as part of the publisher’s 10th anniversary. This 1v1 fighter would later be scrapped, with development restarting towards the 2v2 duo play fighting game we have today.
The consequence of this timeline is that for the ultra dedicated 2XKO fans, this game has been almost a ten years in the waiting. For those with a decent memory, six years and counting. As such a perception has risen among a portion of the fighting game fanbase, one of impatience and general confusion as to why things have taken so long.
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At Evo 2025, I sat down with both 2XKO executive producer Tom Cannon and game director Shaun Rivera, and asked whether the game was revealed too early, and the conflict between what the team considers the ‘proper reveal’ versus the ‘perceived reveal’ of a game a decade in the making. Would they go back and re-think the reveal of Project L if they could?