{"id":14886,"date":"2026-10-01T23:54:48","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T20:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/?p=14886"},"modified":"2026-10-02T04:06:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T00:36:21","slug":"riot-games-co-founder-says-2xko-needed-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-of-monthly-active-players-to-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/2026\/10\/01\/riot-games-co-founder-says-2xko-needed-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-of-monthly-active-players-to-survive\/","title":{"rendered":"Riot Games Co-Founder Says 2XKO Needed \u2018Hundreds of Thousands, if Not Millions\u2019 of Monthly Active Players to Survive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">The co-founder, co-chairman, and chief product officer of Riot Games, Marc Merrill, revealed the number of monthly active users 2XKO would have needed to justify its budget, and the eye-popping amount has sparked an animated debate within the fighting game community.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Speaking on The Lemonade Stand, Merrill went into detail about what happened behind the scenes at Riot to cause 2XKO\u2019s catastrophic failure, and provided a ballpark figure of monthly active users the game would have needed in order to justify how much money and time was spent on its development.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">It\u2019s no surprise that this figure was, to put it lightly, pretty unrealistic for a fighting game; Merrill said that, considering its cost structure, 2XKO would have needed a player count \u201cin the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions\u201d to rationalize its continued support.<\/p>\n<p><span data-cy=\"slideshow-view-trigger\"><\/p>\n<div data-cy=\"slideshow-preview\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 slideshow-preview\">\n<h3 class=\"title5 jsx-62124236 jsx-1085005187\" data-cy=\"slideshow-preview-title\">2XKO &#8211; Braum Screenshots<\/h3>\n<div data-cy=\"slideshow-images-container\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 images-container\"><button type=\"button\" data-cy=\"hero-image\" aria-label=\"Open Slideshow\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 hero-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt aria-hidden=\"true\" role=\"presentation\" class=\"progressive-image jsx-2277167929 image aspect-ratio aspect-ratio-16-9 jsx-2605834259 jsx-2338608387 hover-opacity\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/riot-games-co-founder-says-2xko-needed-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-of-monthly-active-players-to-survive.gif\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Merrill also mentioned Street Fighter 6, saying the 2023 release of Capcom\u2019s juggernaut title threw off their plans to take a big chunk of the fighting game community\u2019s interest off the back of Street Fighter V.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">\u201cI think we had a window to do some great things to really help the fighting game community, and then Street Fighter 6 came out, which was something like eight years after we started working on 2XKO,\u201d Merrill explained. \u201cWe had an awesome development team of really talented people that did great work, that made a beautiful game. We\u2019d already communicated all this stuff to players, and so we were like, \u2018You know what? Let\u2019s just keep going. Let\u2019s give it to the community. Let\u2019s see what happens, right?\u2019 \u2026I think if we came out, ideally when we should\u2019ve, years before Street Fighter, I think we would have made a really significant impact on the community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Merrill explained that Riot didn\u2019t have internal \u201calignment\u201d on the strategy for 2XKO, which caused \u201cmanagerial fracturing\u201d and confusion within the team. Ultimately, not enough players hopped on the game in order to justify the time and money spent on it, so Riot did what they thought was best \u2014 issued full refunds to players and canceled further content updates.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">\u201cWe\u2019ve got nobody to blame but ourselves,\u201d he said. \u201c[2XKO] resonated with some players, but not nearly enough players in order to justify the sort of live service, long-tail approach that the game was designed to do. And so we were like, let\u2019s just pivot, let\u2019s create this box, give everybody a refund, say, \u2018Hey, sorry we weren&#8217;t able to achieve this incredibly high aspiration that we were trying to do for the fighting game community, but we love you guys, appreciate [you], hope they\u2019ll play this game, like many other box games, for years to come, and here you go. Sorry we let you down,\u2019 is sort of the orientation of what happened there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">For comparison, Street Fighter 6 \u2014 which is indisputably the biggest fighting game on the market right now \u2014 boasts an average of anywhere between 16,000 and 20,000 monthly active users on Steam (not including PlayStation, which doesn&#8217;t share these statistics publicly). It\u2019s understandable that Riot, the maker of massively popular MOBA League of Legends, might expect more than that \u2014 but even Riot themselves knew there was no way they could reach \u201cmillions\u201d of monthly active users to justify keeping their tag fighter alive.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Unsurprisingly, Merrill\u2019s comments have sparked a swath of heated reactions within the fighting game community. Most players were left stunned that Riot felt such a high player count was necessary to keep 2XKO afloat, given how relatively &#8220;niche&#8221; the genre is.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">\u201cIt seems like they figured the game wasn&#8217;t going to last long, but they spent so much money on it, so instead of immediately canning it, they released it to see if it would do anything,\u201d one player mused. \u201cUnfortunately, what it needed to do goes way beyond what any fighting game has ever done in existence lol.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">\u201cThe way [Merrill said], \u2018Then Street Fighter 6 came out,\u2019 like that wasn&#8217;t going to happen. SFV had one of the best comeback stories in fighting games. Did he really not think 6 was going to happen?\u201d another asked.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">2XKO was first revealed to the public as \u2018Project L\u2019 in 2019, though rumors of a fighting game based on the League of Legends IP had been swirling around long beforehand. Its confusing release (from a closed beta to extended early access) on the back of a lengthy development period essentially killed most of the hype around the game, and Riot officially announced plans to end active development after December 2026, though online play will still be supported.<\/p>\n<section class=\"author-sign-off\" data-cy=\"author-sign-off\"><span class=\"stack jsx-59817748 jsx-1927875859\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"rounded jsx-444076027 jsx-1730475047 profile-thumb jsx-2141281959 aspect-ratio aspect-ratio-1-1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Virginia Glaze Avatar\" class=\"progressive-image profile-thumb-img jsx-249361588 jsx-2338608387 expand\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/riot-games-co-founder-says-2xko-needed-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-of-monthly-active-players-to-survive.jpg\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"stack jsx-2509706801 jsx-3630940851\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"interface jsx-1132626198 sign-off-text\">\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\"><em>Virginia (she\/her) is IGN\u2019s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she\u2019s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at <\/em>@TheeMissGlaze<em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/section>\n<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/riot-games-co-founder-says-2xko-needed-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-of-monthly-active-players-to-survive-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/riot-games-co-founder-says-2xko-needed-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-of-monthly-active-players-to-survive-1.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/riot-games-co-founder-says-2xko-needed-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-of-monthly-active-players-to-survive-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/riot-games-co-founder-says-2xko-needed-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-of-monthly-active-players-to-survive-1.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-14886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-49","tag-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14888,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886\/revisions\/14888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}