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Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill said 2XKO would have needed “the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions” of monthly active users (MAU) to support its live-service costs. That is Merrill’s approximate estimate—not a published Riot target, an audited break-even figure, or a disclosure of the game’s actual MAU.
What player count did Merrill say 2XKO needed?
In comments from The Lemonade Stand podcast reported by PC Gamer, Merrill said: “At their cost structure, it would’ve been in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions [of monthly users to keep it live service].” The podcast annotation identifies the measure as monthly active users. The figure is a broad range rather than a precise threshold: Merrill did not disclose the underlying cost model or a specific break-even count.
MAU means the number of unique users active during a month. It is not the same as the number playing at one moment, the number who have bought or downloaded a game, or the number who play every day.
Why did Riot end active development?
Riot’s August 20, 2026 announcement described a broader business problem than missing one player-count target. The company said 2XKO cost substantially more to operate than it brought in, and engagement stayed relatively flat despite larger updates. Positive responses to new characters, a PvE mode and competitive events did not produce a sustained change in the game’s trajectory.
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Riot said it reviewed revenue, retention, new players and engagement. It had chosen a free-to-play model to make the fighting game more accessible and discoverable, with the hope that trust and a larger audience would build as content and features arrived. But Riot also said this model required a minimum player base to support its ambitions. Some parts of the fighting-game community adopted 2XKO, the company said, but not at sufficient scale.
What does “success” mean in this estimate?
Merrill’s wording concerns the scale needed to make 2XKO’s intended live-service approach work at its cost structure. It should not be read as a universal rule that any fighting game needs hundreds of thousands of monthly users, or as proof that reaching that count alone would guarantee profitability. Riot has not publicly disclosed 2XKO’s actual MAU, operating costs, revenue, or exact break-even model.
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The number also cannot be checked by substituting a different player metric. Concurrent-player counts show how many people are playing at a particular time on a particular platform; sales count purchases; neither provides a direct measure of monthly active users. PC Gamer described its own estimates from concurrent counts as rough arithmetic and noted that Capcom does not publish Street Fighter 6 MAU.
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Merrill offered timing as one factor in his retrospective view, not as a proven explanation for the business outcome. As reported by Insider Gaming, he said Street Fighter 6 arrived about eight years after work on 2XKO began and that Riot had missed a window to make an impact. The comments do not establish that releasing 2XKO earlier would have attracted enough monthly users to meet Merrill’s estimate.
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For scale, Capcom announced on June 9, 2026 that Street Fighter 6 had passed 7 million cumulative worldwide sales since its 2023 release. That is a sales milestone, not an MAU figure, so it cannot be compared directly with Merrill’s estimate.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What happens to 2XKO after active development ends?
In its August 20, 2026 notice, Riot said active development would end at the close of 2026, while content and feature work would continue through the year. The final major content patch was planned for October, with a possible bug-fix patch in December. Riot said servers would remain online after 2026, and the game would remain free to download on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S; offline play would be unaffected. The notice also announced refunds for purchases made on or before August 20 and changes to gameplay content availability. These are plans stated by Riot on that date and may change; consult Riot’s announcement for the latest details.
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