2XKO Ends With Sett, a Fighter Nobody Expected. Samira and Sett Arrive October 27 in the Game's Last Big Patch, and the Riot MMO's Design Director Reposted the Reveal.

What Happened

Samira and a surprise second fighter, Sett, close out 2XKO's roster on October 27, in a game Riot is winding down because it costs more to run than it earns.

The reveal

• The game. 2XKO is Riot's free 2v2 fighting game set in the League of Legends world. It launched January 20, 2026.
• The post. On October 7 Pacific time, the official 2XKO account posted "ready for the last round? samira and sett complete the 2XKO roster on october 27." with a 3 minute 40 second gameplay trailer.
• A surprise fighter. Riot's roadmap named Samira, the champion called the Desert Rose, as the final fighter. Sett, the boss of Ionia's fighting pits, was not on it.
• Release. Both arrive October 27 in patch 1.3.3 on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
• Moves shown. The news site GosuGamers spotted Sett's Knuckle Down, Facebreaker and Showstopper, and Samira's Daredevil Impulse, Flair, Blade Whirl, Wild Rush and Inferno Trigger. Full move lists aren't out yet.
• The director's note. 2XKO game director Shaun Rivera wrote that "Everyone on our team wanted to give you all one last surprise."

Why 2XKO is ending

• Development ends. Riot wrote on August 20 that "2XKO's active development will conclude at the end of 2026."
• Players didn't stay. Riot's reason: "we haven't seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability."
• Costs beat revenue. The same post: "2XKO costs us substantially more to operate than it brings in."
• Last content patch. Riot called patch 1.3.3 "the final major content patch for the game." An optional December patch 1.3.5 would be "mostly focused on bug fixes."
• Servers and refunds. "Servers will remain on beyond 2026," and Riot is refunding all money spent on or before August 20.
• Merrill's number. Riot co-founder Marc Merrill said on The Lemonade Stand podcast that 2XKO needed monthly players "in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions."

Two MMO developers shared it

• Yetter reposted. Riot MMO game design director Mark Yetter reposted the 2XKO reveal on October 8. His reposts since June have mostly been MMO job listings.
• Tudor built stages. Riot MMO producer Sarah Tudor was the Stages Producer on 2XKO before she joined the MMO in June.
• Fifteen reposts. On October 8 Tudor reposted 15 posts, nearly all fan reactions to the trailer and its new stage.

Neither of them said anything about the MMO. Tudor's last post we covered, a five-word call to lock in, still has no explanation from her.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

2XKO took the League of Legends world into a new genre and is closing because too few players stayed for what it cost; the MMO is Riot's next, bigger bet of that kind.

• The bar. Merrill's "high hundreds of thousands, if not millions" of monthly players is the clearest number Riot has given for what a new game needs at its cost.
• Back to the lab. Riot's August 20 post says it will "head back into the R&D lab." The MMO's job listings describe it as an "Unpublished R&D Product."
• Fighters weren't enough. 2XKO kept adding fighters to the end, Sett included, and still didn't keep enough players.
• How Riot shut it. Riot kept 2XKO's servers on past 2026 and refunded purchases made on or before August 20.

Our read. The MMO is in the spot 2XKO was in, a new genre for the League of Legends world, and Merrill's number shows Riot judges those games against what they cost to run. An MMO costs more to run than a fighting game, so its bar sits above 2XKO's. Its size, launch plans and business model are unrevealed, so how far above is unknown.

Merrill is also the voice in Riot's own clip calling the MMO the grail internally, where the most-liked reply is about 2XKO. And a Riot MMO engineer has already called talk of the game's cancellation fake news.

What to Watch

The dates left on 2XKO's calendar.

Your Take

Reported from Riot Games (@Play2XKO and the 2XKO YouTube channel); corroborated by GosuGamers, EventHubs, Gematsu and Game8 and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.