League of Legends Beat ‘Em Up, 2XKO, Officially Launched: Out Now on Consoles

Riot Games backs existing FGC tournaments with funding and prize support instead of running its own league.

After three months in early access on PC, Riot Games’ latest title to reference League of Legends, 2XKO, is officially out now on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Following release day downtime, 2XKO received a 1.1.1 patch with new content.

Riot Games has also been refining how it handles esports, with 2XKO’s first competitive season running until late March this year. In a recent post on its official site, Riot Games also touched on how it intends to support existing events rather than start up dedicated 2XKO ones.

“In Season 1 we’re launching Frame Perfect: a competitive-themed skin set where a portion of proceeds go toward supporting 2XKO tournament organizers across the world. This includes helping fund prize pools and covering tournament production costs for future 2XKO events.”

Fight Me, You Coward

2XKO continues Riot Games’ plan to branch out the world and characters of League of Legends into other game types. Taking the form of a 2v2 beat ‘em up, 2XKO lets players choose from a roster of famous LoL names, including Jinx, Warwick, and Darius. The game is free-to-play, with characters getting unlocked through Champion Recruitment Events or via in-game currency.

During these, all a player needs to do is play games and complete missions to unlock the new champion for free. Best of all, all champions are available to everyone in Training and Offline mode, even if they haven’t been purchased. The newest champion available is Caitlyn, the Sheriff of Piltover.

There’s also, as to be expected, a Battle Pass with Free and Premium levels. It’s worth noting that other unlockables are purely cosmetic, from character skins to emotes, so there’s no pay-to-win shenanigans going on.

Lastly, with version 1.1.1 out, crossplay is now possible. Plus, if a player moves over from console to PC, or vice versa, their progress follows them. Riot Games has detailed any platform-specific tweaks and fixes in an extensive patch note update.

2XKO Esports

Back in March, 2024, Riot Games revealed its plans to refine how it handles esports, given that LoL (and Valorant) both have very popular global teams and events. In a statement at the time, John Needham, the President of Publishing and Esports at Riot Games, broke the plans down to a simple statement.

“We still believe that the strongest path forward for the esports business is to monetize it more like games, sharing the upside with our team partners,” he said, with a focus (at the time) on LoL esports.

The company recently clarified how it intends to adapt its LoL plans for 2XKO: “Instead of spinning up our own league, our approach is to offer direct support to existing fighting game events. That means providing things like funding, promotion on official Riot channels, and prize pool buffs, with the ultimate goal of creating sustainable, long-term growth for the FGC [Fighting Game Community].”

A selection of some of the communities Riot is partnering with.

To this end, Riot Games is partnering with 20 community organizers to officially sanction international tournaments. Labeled the “2026 Competitive Series,” it includes five Major and 15 Challenger events in total (one Major and three Challenger events tied to each of 2XKO’s five in-game seasons – right now 2XKO is on Season One).

“You can think of Challengers as regional open tournaments meant to give communities more opportunities to compete, and Majors as the five biggest competitive moments for the year,” Riot Games added in a recent news post.

The first Major kicks off with Frosty Faustings in Lombard, Illinois, from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, followed by three Challenger events: Genesis X3 (San Jose, California, Feb. 13-15), Texas Showdown (Houston, Texas, Mar. 27-29), and Viennality (Wein, Austria, Mar. 28-29).

Gamers interested in creating their own 2XKO event are welcome to do so, according to Riot Games’ transparent community guidelines.

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