2XKO Director Admits the League of Legends Fighter Won’t Nail Everything on Day One — Riot Vows Swift Fixes

Restless and unafraid to fail, the team is ripping up the playbook and running rapid-fire experiments—betting that bold risks now will translate into outsized wins later.

Riot is about to find out what happens when the League of Legends universe steps into a totally different ring. 2XKO, their tag-team fighter, hits early access in October, and the studio is already telling fans to expect some growing pains. Honestly, that tracks when you build a fighting game for the first time and refuse to play it safe.

Early access jitters, on purpose

In the new issue of Edge, game director Shaun Rivera paints a very clear picture: he is excited and also a little terrified about launch. The team wants to experiment in a genre they haven’t shipped before, and that means the first few rounds might get messy. Unlike Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter, 2XKO isn’t standing on decades of its own tech, libraries, or animation assets. There’s no legacy to lean on here, which is both gutsy and risky.

'We are going to make mistakes. We want to try stuff. Some of it will land and some of it will whiff, but we will address it.'

Why the launch might feel a little thin

Rivera also acknowledges the roster at launch won’t be huge. That’s not because they’re holding back; it’s because they’re building every champion from scratch and learning as they go. There are no old fighting-game animations to reuse, no shortcuts pulled from past projects. The upside: a lot of characters are already in the pipeline at different stages of development, and the plan is to roll them out as they’re ready.

• Early access lands in October, and Riot expects a bumpy start
• The team is new to shipping a fighting game and is deliberately trying new ideas
• Launch roster will be on the smaller side, built entirely from scratch
• Expect tweaks, reversals, and fixes as experiments hit or miss
• More champions are already in development and lined up for post-launch
• The goal is to stand alongside Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but they know they have to earn that spot

Eyes on the heavyweights, but no shortcuts

Rivera says the ambition is to rub shoulders with the genre’s giants, but he’s not pretending 2XKO is there yet. The vibe is: launch, learn, iterate, keep iterating. It’s a very live-service mindset applied to a scene that usually treats new entries like monoliths.

It’s a refreshing bit of honesty. If you go in expecting a polished museum piece on day one, you’ll probably be annoyed. If you’re up for a scrappy first round with a team that’s promising to fix the misses fast, 2XKO sounds like it’s worth stepping into the ring for.