Riot’s League of Legends fighter is now called 2XKO

Riot Games has given Project L, its in-development 2v2 fighting game, an official name: 2XKO.

2XKO — a name that is unlikely to spawn its own catchphrase ala “When’s Mahvel?” — was first announced in 2019 along with a battery of other League-themed projects including Arcane and Legends of Runeterra. Last year, however, Riot underwent layoffs of around 500 people, scaling back projects including Runeterra and shuttering its publishing arm Riot Forge.

Since that first announcement, Riot has offered sporadic development updates culminating in the game’s first hands-on demo at EVO 2023.

2XKO is a 2v2 fighter, but unlike other tag-team fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom, 2XKO lets you play competitively or cooperatively. Players can team up, controlling one of the two characters on a team that can swap in and out of the fight at will.

Players build their team from a roster of characters across the League of Legends universe. Currently we’ve only seen a few characters from the roster — Ahri, Ekko, Darius, and Yasuo primary among them — each with abilities similar to the ones they have in League. Ekko can make temporal clones of himself while Ahri slings around her characteristic orbs.

The name reveal wasn’t the only news Riot had for 2XKO. The developer is targeting 2025 for its release window, will offer more hands-on demos starting in April at EVO Japan 2024, and promises to start at-home playtesting by the end of the year. 2XKO will launch on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.