Riot Games claims they canceled a Super Smash Bros.-style fighting game

Riot Games achieved fame, success, and money with League of Legends. But they were never satisfied with that. TFT showed that they were capable of competing in more markets. Valorant showed that they could excel even in those markets that were already saturated. And while it’s true that Legends of Runeterra was a stumble, proving unable to compete with games like Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering, that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to navigate between genres. And it doesn’t mean they haven’t learned to be cautious over time.

According to what we’ve learned through the reporter Mikhail Klimentov, there was a moment when Riot Games was working on a platform fighting game in the style of Super Smash Bros. A prototype was created, and they had assigned between 70 and 80 developers for the project. This means that it was at a very advanced stage of the project. And we speak in past-tense because, unfortunately, the game was canceled.

The reason for this title’s cancellation was none other than the success of MultiVersus. Seeing the success that the Warner Bros. game was having, Riot executives were not convinced that there was as much appetite among players for another alternative to the popular Nintendo franchise. That’s why they decided to close the project, even in such an advanced state, considering Riot Games is always working on several games at once. It doesn’t represent a serious loss for the studio.

Fortunately, this did not result in a round of layoffs. Half the team was offered reassignment within the studio, while the other half was considered for internal roles. This is not usually the case when a video game is canceled.

This means that, as far as we know, the only fighting game being developed by Riot Games is 2XKO. A 2v2 team fighting game that’ll be coming soon to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC, though we still don’t have a release date. We assume it should arrive at some point in 2025.

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