When Riot Games set out to build a fighting game set in the League of Legends universe, the hype was through the roof. But making a 2v2 tag-team fighter stand out in a niche genre turned out to be a massive uphill battle.
Former Riot producer John Ricchio sat down for an exclusive interview with Thunderpick to peel back the curtain on the harsh reality behind 2XKO‘s development and sudden downsizing.
From the brutal math of player retention to how unreleased champions accidentally leak online, Ricchio offered an unfiltered look at what happened inside the studio.
The Big Bet That Struggled to Pay Off
Riot stacked the 2XKO dev team with absolute fighting game royalty, including the Cannon brothers and deep genre experts. But as Ricchio explained to Thunderpick, trying to bridge the gap between casual League of Legends fans and hardcore fighting game players is a risky proposition.
“To set some context for 2XKO, it was a big bet. It’s a very small addressable market, fighting games in general, and we were trying to capture a portion of that market… The bet was that they were going to be able to capture some segment of the hardcore population and, through the IP, pull people over into fighting games,” he said.
Despite earning high praise from top pros and fighting game veterans, the numbers just were not adding up behind the scenes.
“I think what they realized as we got closer was that there wasn’t enough success on 2XKO. There weren’t enough people playing,” Ricchio added. “There weren’t enough people buying things to sustain the full size of the team.”
Sudden Layoffs and a 160-Person Dev Team
When the player base and revenue failed to justify maintaining a massive 160-person development team, Riot had to make some painful cuts. Speaking to Thunderpick, Ricchio revealed that roughly 82 developers were let go shortly after the console launch.
Said Ricchio: “There’s about 82 of us that got let go. So the feeling… the notice was not there… I started to notice the people above me were acting differently… Some people learn earlier than others. But it still felt sudden to a lot of us as well, especially… I’d only been there a few… some of the people, we’d only been there seven months.”
Riot ultimately had to decide who was strictly necessary to keep the project alive on a smaller scale, adjusting their expectations to fit a leaner era for the game.
How Unreleased Champions Keep Leaking Online
If you have ever wondered why unannounced 2XKO fighters keep popping up on social media months ahead of schedule, Ricchio cleared up the mystery during his Thunderpick interview. Contrary to theories about secret corporate spies, it usually comes down to simple human slip-ups during test builds.
“Most unreleased champions or stages slip into test builds due to simple user errors in data registries,” he said.
While developers dread seeing their work-in-progress assets exposed early, Ricchio admitted that marketing teams sometimes secretly welcome a leak if it shifts a negative news cycle or gives fans something to get excited about during a dry spell.
