Riot Games has attempted to expand League of Legends to various other genres over the last decade, and the team’s experiment with Valorant was a major success. This prompted a fighting game title in the form of 2XKO, but initial results don’t appear to be too promising.
Despite no shortage of excitement for this fighting game, Riot Games announced layoffs days after 2XKO was launched to the public. Making matters worse, the team seemingly laid off its developers on as short notice as 30 minutes.
According to Patrick Miller on BSKY, Riot Games informed him of the layoffs a mere 30 minutes before the changes went into effect. The developer had been working on the project for ten out of his twelve years at the studio, leading to disappointment across the board.
Following this post on BSKY, many also reached out to Patrick Miller to share their condolences and comfort him on the disheartening occasion. As per the developer, working on 2XKO was a fantastic experience, even if it ended abruptly.
“Ten years on 2XKO, and I got laid off with 30 minutes notice.” -Patrick Miller
Other developers shared similar messages on the disappointing occasion. For context, Riot Games noted that the fighting game failed to find as big an audience as the team had hoped for, leading to downsizing and changes to plans.
Of course, Riot Games will continue to support 2XKO with competitive events. In the official update, the studio also promised to help its laid-off employees through this transition, but if Patrick Miller’s post is anything to go by, it’s questionable how closely the team will follow this commitment.
In total, the latest round of job cuts is said to have impacted around 80 employees from the 2XKO team. This comes as quite a shock, considering the studio’s ambitions for this project and the fighting games genre in general.
