Fighting Game Landscape in 2026
Yesterday, Riot announced that it was ending active development on 2XKO, its League of Legends fighting game, after just one year. The game had its troubles, but it also had a really solid foundation that Riot seemed hellbent on not adequately building upon after laying off staff less than a month after the game’s console launch. Riot abandoning ship wasn’t necessarily a surprise after all this time, but if you’d told a lot of fighting game fans a year ago that 2026’s lineup of promising fighting games would go over as poorly as it has, that would have at least merited a few raised eyebrows.
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is a great game at its core, but its messy PC port had it tripping over itself right out the gate. Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game also has good bones, but has also been burdened by its own controversies and has been criticized for feeling unfinished. Invisible VS is the definition of “came and went,” and the majority of staff at developer Quarter Up were reportedly laid off after the fighter failed to find a bigger audience.
You were supposed to go blow for blow with tokon for years man… https://t.co/Xh7Dl1x0ak pic.twitter.com/UTx9ZNa5QN
— Jo @ Vacation (@bookofjo_) August 20, 2026
welcome to fighting games in 2026, we got:
-a game shut down after <1 year of going live
-a game ppl forgot about almost immediately after release
-a good game that was rushed with missing features and unfinished characters
-a game with a botched PC port and bad matchmaking
— LucyTheLamia (COME TO SQXL) (@LucyTheLamia) August 20, 2026
The long line of poor launches has fans concerned, not necessarily about the future of fighting games as a whole, but about how many new studios and projects might invest in the genre, or if longstanding games like Street Fighter are destined to rule the roost.
“This is all to say that Fighting Games may be absolutely cooked both in indie and in AAA/AA,” a redditor writes following Riot’s announcement about the end of development on 2KXO. “Now I’m not saying we’re doomed, but we’re basically stuck with what we have for a while. The market is somewhat locked. Major failures like 2XKO and Fatal Fury will basically drive away nearly all new investment for a AAA scale title. Not to mention the lackluster staying power for things like Avatar Legends and Invincible VS basically mean the indie/AA market is also somewhat cooked.”
© Marvel
Of these games, Marvel Tōkon likely has the best chance at maintaining a long tail, buoyed by both Sony’s and Marvel’s support. The game already has a planned first year of new fighters in the pipeline, though Sony has pulled the plug on projects before. My gut says Tōkon will have greater staying power just based on the strength of its characters alone. Early Steam numbers haven’t been great, with daily players having declined to four figures just a couple of weeks after launch, but it also sounds like the game has sold significantly more copies on PS5, which makes some sense considering the negative word of mouth on the Steam version.
Broadly speaking, the fighting game community is going through a rough patch right now. The scene’s biggest tournament has been bought up by Saudi money, new games are having trouble getting off the ground, and old classics are waxing and waning in popularity. Whatever the future holds, it is a shame to see so many promising games not take off the way it seemed like they could have. There should be more games than just Street Fighter thriving, and I really hope that Arc System Works gets Tōkon where it needs to be to get back on its feet.
