Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill said 2XKO would have needed “the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions” of monthly active users to support its live-service ambitions at the game’s cost structure. That was an approximate, attributed estimate—not a published Riot target or a confirmed break-even number. Riot’s own explanation for ending active development cited a broader problem: costs substantially exceeded revenue, while engagement did not improve sustainably despite larger updates.
What MAU number did Marc Merrill give for 2XKO?
In comments from The Lemonade Stand podcast reported by PC Gamer and Insider Gaming, Merrill said: “At their cost structure, it would’ve been in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” PC Gamer says the podcast annotation specifies monthly active users, or MAU.
In context, Merrill was answering how many players would have been needed to keep 2XKO alive. The phrase gives a broad scale, not a precise threshold. Riot has not published 2XKO’s actual MAU, operating costs, revenue, or an exact break-even model, so Merrill’s estimate should not be treated as a disclosed company KPI or independently verified calculation.
Why did Riot say it was ending active development?
Riot’s August 20, 2026 announcement said it had reviewed revenue, retention, new-player growth, and engagement. The company said 2XKO cost substantially more to operate than it brought in, and that engagement remained relatively flat even after larger updates. Positive responses to new characters, a PvE mode, and competitive events did not produce a meaningful, sustained improvement in the game’s trajectory, according to Riot’s announcement.
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Riot’s stated reasoning was therefore broader than missing a single player-count target. Merrill’s MAU estimate describes the scale he associated with the cost structure; Riot described a combination of financial and engagement results that did not support the live-service plan.
Why did 2XKO need a large audience?
Riot chose a free-to-play model to make the fighting game more accessible and discoverable. Its plan, as described in the shutdown notice, was to build trust with core fighting-game players and grow the audience as content and features were added. Riot also acknowledged that this model needed a minimum player base to support its ambitions. Some parts of the fighting-game community adopted 2XKO, the company said, but not at the scale required.
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That context helps explain why “players” here should be read as a recurring audience, not a one-time count of downloads or purchases. A live service needs enough ongoing participation to support continued operations and content. The public statements do not disclose the revenue per player, retention targets, or other inputs that would let readers calculate a more exact threshold.
What does Street Fighter 6’s sales milestone tell us—and what doesn’t it?
Capcom announced on June 9, 2026 that Street Fighter 6 had surpassed 7 million cumulative worldwide sales. That establishes a major sales milestone for a competing fighting game; it does not establish 7 million monthly active users. Sales, concurrent-player counts, and MAU measure different things.
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PC Gamer also cautions that estimates derived from concurrent counts are rough arithmetic and notes that Capcom has not published Street Fighter 6 MAU. Such estimates cannot verify 2XKO’s actual audience or show whether it could have reached Merrill’s estimate. The available figures do not support a direct MAU comparison between the games.
Did Street Fighter 6 arrive too late for 2XKO?
Merrill offered timing as one retrospective factor. He said Street Fighter 6 arrived about eight years after work on 2XKO had begun, and remarked that Riot had had a window to make an impact in the fighting-game community. That is his assessment, not evidence that releasing 2XKO earlier would have met its audience or financial requirements. The sources do not establish that counterfactual.
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What happens to 2XKO after active development ends?
In its August 20, 2026 announcement, Riot said active development would conclude at the end of 2026, while content and feature work would continue through the year. It planned a final major content patch for October and said a December bug-fix patch was possible. Riot also said servers would remain online after 2026; the game would remain free to download on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S; and offline play would be unaffected. The announcement included refunds for purchases made on or before August 20 and changes to gameplay-content availability. These are plans stated on that date; consult Riot’s notice for the current details.
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