League of Legends Fighting Game 2XKO Will Soft-Launch In Closed Beta This September

Additionally, Riot announced that one of Arcane’s protagonists, Vi, is the next fighter coming to the game. She will be playable on the Evo show floor at Riot’s booth as the event runs from August 1-3, and will be included in the Beta from the jump.

As for the details regarding Closed Beta, it will be launching on PC first with later availability on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. It will also have full cross-platform progression and inventory, meaning players can start on PC and then switch to consoles once those versions become available. Those who participated in either of the game’s earlier play tests, Alpha Lab 1 or 2, on any platform, will automatically get access to the Beta, and new players can sign up on Riot’s website.

For those out of the loop, 2XKO was originally announced as Project L back in 2019. It’s a free-to-play 2v2 tag game, which means you switch between two characters on the fly. The game generated quite a bit of buzz when it was first announced as it was being handled by the Riot-acquired studio Radiant Entertainment, which developed the fighting game Rising Thunder. The team working on the game is helmed by Tony and Tom Cannon, brothers well-known in the Fighting Game Community for helping launch the Evo tournament series and for developing GGPO, a technology that made online play substantially smoother and formed the basis of rollback netcode.

Having participated in the first Alpha Lab, 2XKO has real promise, with 2v2 tag fighter bedlam that seems like it could offer a great deal of depth despite its use of simplified directional controls that forgo traditional motion inputs. While many in the FGC have become somewhat fatigued with the game’s long development cycle and are skeptical about its small starting roster (it will possibly only have eight characters when the Beta begins), players will be able to judge the game for themselves when it soft-launches this September.