We still haven't really had a proper look at 2XKO, Riot's League of Legends-based 2v2 fighting game, and it sounds like that's a state of affairs that's going to continue for a while yet. In a message posted on Reddit, 2XKO game director Shaun Rivera said plans for a global playtest in March have been pushed back, and instead it's going for something "much smaller" as developers continue to work on the game.
"We’ve seen and enjoyed the crazy memes and the hysteria of the subreddit while waiting for the Feb update, and wanna correct some of the misinformation going around," Rivera wrote. "We were planning on running a larger-scale global playtest next month, and the Feb update was going to cover what was in that playtest. Instead, we are going to focus on running a much smaller one than Alpha Lab 1 while we build out the infrastructure needed to make sure we can get the game in even more players hands later this year."
Alpha Lab 1 was 2XKO's first online playtest, based on a "super early build," that ran in August 2024. Riot said in November 2024 that it intended to hold another playtest in spring 2025, and that it would "be available in more regions than our first Alpha Lab."
Rivera also said that, following feedback from testers, Pulse Fuse has been "removed and replaced with an autocombo setting that each player can toggle on or off during champ select." Riot has also added a few Fuse called Sidekick, which keeps second fighters sidelined "to support your point champ, who gains additional health."
There's some excitement for those changes, but word of a smaller playtest has a lot of fans in the 2XKO subreddit convinced that the game, despite being in development since at least 2019 and having a hoped-for release in 2025, isn't going to be out anytime soon.
"Yeah the game isn't coming out till at least November/December if it is even coming out this year," redditor Sudden-Ad-307 wrote in response to Rivera's message.
"Pivoting to smaller Alpha Lab 2 means a global open beta won't happen until post-EVO," kiddavidacus added. "Even then, they seem to be making significant gameplay changes after the Alpha Labs. It'll be quite some time before we get close to a final build IMO. Also, I am sure there are major decisions on final roster size and monetization in-game."
Redditor HawksBurst wrote, "There's no way in hell this game's still coming in 2025 (which never was, let's be real) when we'd be getting an EVEN SMALLER alpha than the previous one, and the 'big reveal' was going to be a few chars at best." Gavor7 made an even more dire prediction in a very to-the-point comment: "Man this game is never coming out."
Some redditors expressed understanding of the lengthy development process, noting that Riot has made some big changes to 2XKO's design since it was first announced. But even much of that is tempered by disappointment: "What's annoying is they announced the game so many years early," sievold wrote. "It already feels like old news and the game hasn't even come out yet."
Unfortunately for 2XKO fans eager to know more, it sounds like details are going to have to wait. Rivera said Riot has "some other cool stuff that we are cooking, but we are not quite ready to talk about that just yet," and that developers "are excited to tell you more as soon as we can, ideally next month." So, maybe not next month, too.
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