Riot Games co-founder Marc ‘Tryndamere’ Merrill stated on the Lemonade Stand podcast that 2XKO would have required players in the “high hundreds of thousands, if not millions” to keep 2XKO alive.
The podcast, hosted by Brandon ‘Atrioc’ Ewing, Aiden ‘Calvin’ McCaig, and Douglas ‘DougDoug’ Wreden, discussed the difficult development of 2XKO, with the Riot Co-Chair claiming that Street Fighter 6’s release damaged the title’s potential success.
Riot confirmed in August that 2XKO would cease active development in December 2026, with players receiving all in-game content and receiving refunds.
Marc ‘Tryndamere’ Merrill outlines troubled 2XKO development
Featured on the Lemonade Stand podcast, Merrill discussed the Research & Development pipeline on AAA studios. Following that discussion point, show host Aiden Ewing asked Merrill about the expectations for 2XKO, and the development budget and timeline.
“So 2X[KO] is a really interesting story because the original premise for 2X was ‘let’s take Rising Thunder,’ simple controls, cool concept relating to a 1v1 fighting game, that’s sort of easyish to play, but still has depth and mastery, let’s have the League IP with the Cannon brothers, and add a cool Riot-style competitive ecosystem, and let’s go.”
Rising Thunder was a free-to-play fighting game that was released in Alpha state in 2015 before Riot acquired Radiant Entertainment. The game was subsequently removed from stores upon Riot’s acquisition, and the game was cancelled.
Merrill explained the lack of strategic alignment behind the scenes at Riot, sharing, “We bought Radiant [Entertainment] back in 2015 when we started partnering with the Cannons, and in terms of scaling and different leadership paradigms, and different goals.
With changes in leadership, there wasn’t alignment on the strategy, which then caused managerial fracturing and the team to kind of be on their own, and hear from different people at the company, ‘Are we moving fast and doing the sniper shot that needs to be incredible?’ There were all these different statements around, so we’ve got no one else to blame but ourselves.”
Street Fighter 6 release damaged 2XKO
Merrill continued, sharing that he believed the game had a “window” for release, a window which was then shut by Street Fighter 6’s release in June 2023:
“I think we had a window to do some great things to really help the fighting games community, then Street Fighter 6 came out, which was something like eight years after we started working on 2X.”
Despite the release of SF6 removing that window, Riot made the decision to release the game, with Merrill sharing, “We had an awesome development team of really talented people that did great work, that made a beautiful game, and we had already communicated all this stuff to players, so we were like, ‘You know what? Let’s just keep going, and let’s give it to the community and see what happens.'”
The Riot co-founder reiterated later in the podcast, “I think if we came out ideally like we should have, years before Street Fighter, I think we really would have made a significant impact on the community.”
“One thing that’s important with 2X is that it resonated with some players, but not nearly enough players in order to justify the sort of live-service, long-tailed approach that the game was designed to do.
“So we were like, ‘Let’s just pivot, let’s create this box, let’s give everyone a refund’ and say, ‘Hey, sorry that we weren’t able to achieve this high aspiration that we wanted to do, but we love you guys and hope that you play this game for years to come and sorry we let you down.'”
Aiden Ewing then asked Merrill, “With the amount of investment that went into 2XKO specifically, what number would have been the game to keep that game alive?”
To which Merrill revealed, “Well, at their cost structure, it would have been in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Replying to host Atrioc, he added that the game was “Too expensive, too big a team.”
Were Riot’s expectations too high? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, see why Valorant Champions players need to use wired mice in Shanghai. And for even more Insider Gaming delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.
Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
More from Darragh Harbinson
Comments