What SEGA vs. Capcom Can Learn from 2XKO

2XKO came out strong with a very large player base. It isn't just a fighting game. It is a very special tag-based fighting game that became a huge success, even in Season 1 where Caitlyn was introduced and she is kawaii and savage.

This means that if any developer can take a crack at developing a tag fighting game, they must use 2XKO as a masterclass of a successful free-to-play fighting game. That includes one developer that is behind their fan game being Madxruler and their fan game, SEGA vs. Capcom: The Next Level. It is essentially a fan made vs. Capcom fighting game with characters from SEGA and Capcom's IPs. Tag team battles, Exceed feature and all that. It pretty much lives up to the Sonic vs. Mega Man thing. It is arguably one of the great fan games that is seemingly getting a Season 1 in July according to the short trailer.

I realized why the game became ghosted before I go to a match. It's because I didn't had enough RAM that the game is memory-intensive. But I was able to upgrade my gaming computer to a 32GB RAM. 16GB RAM is okay for it, but 32GB is ideal while 64GB is overkill for pure modern gaming. 

The Modern Setting

Many modern fighting games weren't hated because they have innovations. 2XKO is an innovative tag-team fighting game with multiple rounds, characters having their own super gauge, you get the picture. Currently, SEGA vs. Capcom takes place in the setting where it involves pressing any button to choose a character. But we can modernize that so that they can pick a character with the button that chooses a character, go back with the button that takes them back to the previous section and can change their controls. If they pick a character, they would be prompted to choose a palette. I believe that this can be done in the form of Invincible VS.

But this just the first thing, so in this post, we're gonna go over the following things that 2XKO did that SEGA vs. Capcom: The Next Level can learn from.

Duo Play

2XKO introduced Duo Play, a feature that allows each player on their team to control their character. Solo is when a player controls both characters. When you go on a lobby, you would find someone to duo up with because there isn't a feature that allows players to randomly duo up with someone through matchmaking. The survey has that and I put that on top of the list of potential features because duos are way more fun than solos and we want to duo up with a random player through matchmaking, especially when we're grinding the First Steps missions.

And if we go to Shaun for a second on the post that just recently came out that has a paragraph about Duo Play...

"You've told us that playing as a duo offers an experience that's really unique and fun when you and a friend can team up and take on the world, and we agree--we're going to be investing in duo play much more: making duos easier to find and form, and making it more rewarding to play together."

While there is no mentioning of online, what Shaun meant is that we will be able to duo up with a random player through matchmaking on Casual and Ranked lobbies. This also applies to lifting restrictions from Ranked so that duos would be easier to find and we don't have to duo with a player through partner invites. This is something we've been asking for and with Shaun announcing that they're gonna make duos easier to find and form, our wish is being fulfilled.

While SEGA vs. Capcom has four players on the Cross Fever game mode, I believe that this can be cranked up to eleven that it can have up to four players across multiplayer game modes, training mode and online play, have duo co-op on Arcade Mode and follow 2XKO's footsteps so that each player can set up their controls and one player would choose Sonic as the point character and the other on the same team would choose X as the assist character and vice versa. This requires the role select screen to take place before choosing our characters in offline game modes.

Competitive Scene

Riot knocked it out of the park with their First Impact program that brings offline and online tournaments dedicated to 2XKO into the spotlight. The program became a hit and the game has unleashed its full potential on the competitive scene that it became a core backbone of the FGC. And now, Riot is set to offering direct support to existing local tournaments dedicated to 2XKO through the announced official yearly Competitve Series with monetary support, promotion on official Riot channels, buffs to prize pools and a format of having five major events and 15 challenger events, with Frosty Faustings XVIII being the first major event to kick things off and Battle Coliseum to be the "Super Bowl" of the 2XKO Competitive Series, making it a total of 20 events independently from 2XKO's ingame seasons.

And now that 2XKO is available on consoles, TOs will have to bring PS5s into venues where offline tournaments take place at going forward, starting with Frosty Faustings XVIII to kick off the Competitive Series. And it won't just alleviate the technical issues when it comes to setting up controls, but make it so that the console versions would automatically be on offline mode when there is no Internet connection, also easier than launching the game on offline mode through the separate executable, especially since we can't launch the game on offline mode through the Riot Client while there is no Internet connection. With 2XKO chosen to be in the main lineup for Evo 2026, Evo Japan 2026 and Evo France 2026 as major events for the Competitive Series, 2026 is gonna be one heck of a year for 2XKO with esports action.

SEGA vs. Capcom was showcased at Combo Breaker 2025 as part of the Mystery Tournament, which is my favorite kind because it don't have to be limited to fighting games, but games with multiplayer as well. The part where SEGA vs. Capcom was showcased at Combo Breaker was met with widespread praise that it driven a lot of people to try this game out. And this can be amped up a bit so that the game can have its own tournament like others and can be showcased in multiple events. But since it's a fanmade game, it won't use the Competitive Series format that has 20 events divided by five seasons to have four events or have their own league. Instead, TOs can set up offline tournaments for this game if it's chosen.

Rollback Netcode and Lobbies

Rollback is a type of netcode that offers buttery smooth online play and predicts the inputs instead of waiting for the signal to hit it before a character's action. 2XKO offers rich rollback netcode and lobbies. Riot did online servers before having offline game modes in Closed Beta and they're looking to improve netplay in Early Access and beyond with new features, including the ones I saw on the survey. SEGA vs. Capcom already has netplay available and it can be amped up significantly so that it can have rollback netcode and casual and ranked lobbies that use dedicated servers so that there wouldn't be disconnects and Duo Play across online game modes. This gives players a smoother online experience and they can simply enjoy netplay without any problems and offers an amped up experience.

Attention to Detail

There is a LOT of attention that 2XKO has. When Alpha Lab 1 has concluded, they missed this game. When Alpha Lab 2 launched, a lot of people didn't get invited, including myself because it was a disappointingly small playtest. Closed Beta opened the gates to being a final invite-only play window that those who participated in Alpha Lab 1 or 2 will automatically gain access to the game, including console players, who would automatically gain access to the game on the Riot Client on PC.

SEGA vs. Capcom also has attention, but not as much as 2XKO. Deen and Noid played this game for their Father and Son Beatdown and it was showcased at Combo Breaker. My favorite part is the characters being locked out. Where it stands, Vyse and Morrigan are finished and the teaser trailer shows how finished they are, so go watch it. I know it's a fangame, but this game deserves a lot of attention when it was showcased at any offline tournament.

Character Archetypes

Fighting games in particular have characters that are unique by archetypes. The characters in 2XKO come with unique archetypes of some characters in 2XKO having the same playstyle as characters in other fighting games, like Teemo's rolling dash to indicate that Teemo is the Sonic in 2XKO with it and it serves as an innovative approach.

But remember that I said in the last post that there is one of the planned characters in SEGA vs. Capcom is going to have the same playstyle as Yasuo in 2XKO? Well, one of the planned characters in SEGA vs. Capcom is most likely to hypothetically have the same playstyle as Yasuo is Sakura Shinguji from Sakura Wars. But how would Sakura play similarly to Yasuo when she is finished? Well, she is a samurai of the cherry blossom and she is likely to be a mid range character and this is the dopamine rush the game needs. But we won't know if it's true or not until Vyse and Morrigan are finished. But we do know one thing for sure. Sakura is likely to come out in 2026 alongside Linn Kurosawa, whose development time takes the longest due to her being multiple characters in one and none of the characters in League of Legends are faithful to her performance when they debut to 2XKO.

But here's another thing. The 11th and 12th characters have been already confirmed to be in development. If they ask who do we think the 11th and 12th character would be, I have two characters that I think can do well.

First off, for the SEGA side, I say Gilius from Golden Axe. Now, Gilius is the main protagonist in the Golden Axe series on the successive SEGA Genesis. If our axe wielding warrior is confirmed, I think he'll likely to have the same playstyle as Darius. There's no other axe swinging character in 2XKO.

Now let's go on to the next character that is a Capcom character, Jon Talbain from Darkstalkers. Why Jon Talbain, the wolf in Darkstalkers, would be a great addition? Well, there is one obvious reason. Warwick. Vander became a wolf to be called Warwick. He became a decent and less annoying character to play against than Teemo. There is a fresh concept that if Jon comes to SEGA vs. Capcom, he'll be able to do well and come close to how well Warwick performed in 2XKO.

And since we got Caitlyn in 2XKO, I wonder if any of the SEGA or Capcom characters that are not in the game can have the same playstyle as her if they make it into the fan game? 

If we look at the old character select screen, the game started out with six characters when the game had its first at home playtest. These characters are available by default and newcomers have to grind enough Credits to unlock future characters beyond the first six characters. And when the game launches on console...

The roster has been doubled to 12 characters. That's a decent amount of characters in a tag fighter. The roster containing a dozen characters is even, but not for long because the 13th character is coming.

However, since 2XKO is moving from having five seasons to having three seasons as Riot learned how we play in Early Access, the second character of the year will fall within Season 1 with Caitlyn while the third and fourth characters of the year will fall within Season 2, following MultiVersus' footsteps, and the final character of the year will launch at the start of Season 3, indicating that the five characters per year release cadence is still in play

Since Frosty Faustings is almost upon us, maybe they can reveal the second character of the year before Top 8. That or reveal the 2026 character roadmap since they already have Caitlyn and future Champions locked in and planned well for quite some time as Shaun said.

Instead of me telling you, let's take a look at what will happen to the placement of the character select screen if we get a 17th character in 2XKO. I went to MS Paint to draw the placement and my work has unfolded well. Let's get to the reenactment.

Now, if the 17th character launches in 2027, the portraits can be shrunk a bit to pave the way for more characters after the 16th character and have a third row. This makes it 36 characters, which will be the roster for 2030. This is what the placement of the character select screen should look like when the 17th character launches. You would notice that the placement resembles Tekken Tag Tournament 2's, but has an angle to match the rest of the character select screen.

For fanciness, I colored the slots on the left side blue for SEGA and the slots on the right side yellow for Capcom. Now, this is important to remember that the fan game will have more characters.

Combo Trials

2XKO has introduced Combo Trials in Early Access. The game mode helps you learn combos for each character. They earn you credits and they are rewarding depending on the difficulty. I think SEGA vs. Capcom needs to have Combo Trials to help them learn combos. It's something that players must do. Learn combos.

Peripherals

There are a lot of peripherals 2XKO uses, like controllers and arcade sticks across most brands. That unlocked endless possibilities for players that prefer to use a controller or use a stick. SEGA vs. Capcom allows controllers, but this can be amped up a bit so that the game wouldn't be only playable on controllers that it can also allow the use of arcade sticks across most brands.

These are the things that SEGA vs. Capcom: The Next Level can learn from 2XKO so that it can be a phenomenonal game. This is more important than you think. Madxruler is an independent developer. They can develop their fangame however they wish and want. They don't have the burden of a big company and be riddled with the shareholding shackles of a AAA company. If Madxruler pours their hearts into this game, then I believe it can have much of a guaranteed chance to be featured as a core backbone of the FGC and have the same treatment as 2XKO.

Now, why is this important to talk about? That's a good question. After I condensed the positive critic reviews on Metacritic, 2XKO became a critically acclaimed League of Legends fighting game. It became so phenomenal that it became universally liked, by both the players and the pros. Everything in Season 1 ranging from Caitlyn to balance changes for the whole cast to get everything prepared for Frosty Faustings and training while waiting for an opponent in Ranked ensured a strong growth the game has deserved so that it wouldn't have a lackluster launch and the developer of SEGA vs. Capcom can follow Riot's footsteps. Same with other companies, indie or AAA.

WB Games has had a small chip on their shoulder on what happened with MultiVersus and why it had to be shut down early. Now, what happened with MultiVersus, you ask? WB Games dishonored the Open Beta with exploitative monetization mechanics from replacing the free currency with new currencies that can't be used to obtain low in rarity skins or earned through finishing matches and grinding daily and weekly missions. This led to shutting down the game. The leadership at Riot is avoiding this practice so that 2XKO would be a commercially successful free-to-play tag fighter and can change everything.

If you want to know more about how 2XKO changed everything and how it became a critically acclaimed and commercially successful game, you can click the link to the post that covers it all.

https://rpggameroom.blogspot.com/2026/01/2xko-has-changed-everything.html

2XKO Has Changed EVERYTHING

I think 2XKO has changed everything in the gaming industry. No. I'm dead serious. I think 2XKO has changed everything. Now, I know that this is a bold take. I know that some people would disagree. I know that one user would say that this game is butt cheeks and complain about how exploitative monetization is, but it's okay because I'm gonna highlight and explain how it changed everything from both the content and player experience perspective. Let's jump right in.

Still here? Good, because the first thing that some people are going to say is that 2XKO didn't change everything, but Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls will. In a way, yes, Marvel Tōkon's announcement during June's State of Play definetely brought the Marvel fighting game foundation back into the limelight. But not as a free-to-play title, but as a successor to the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise to become the new heart of the FGC set to release in 2026. They did host a tournament during the game's Closed Beta, and that's only the beginning.

See, we don't consider one-time purchases or Battle Passes as exploitative. But there are a couple things that are exploitative. First off, Spotlight Pipes in Mario Kart Tour is an obvious example of exploitative monetization mechanics that it became a continuous point of contention as a gacha mechanic. It's like lootboxes, but uses pipes to give you a random item. A young boy's father teamed up with his son and sued Nintendo together for implementing the gacha mechanic. It became a controversial piece to undermine player enjoyment and pressured players to pay money for Rubies, so Nintendo has removed it and replaced it with a normal shop that contains new and old content, including the ones players' don't own yet, and made Spotlight Pipes earnable for free, thus making monetization duller to attract existing and new players.

Pay-to-win scenarios involve items that they had to pay real money for to buy items that give the player an advantage over their opponent, creating an unfair advantage. This form can alienate players and it was done by Paladins with its introduction of the notorious Cards Unbound in OB64, which was removed to win back players. It is possible to remove elements that introduced aggressive monetization tactics from a free-to-play game. While yes, free-to-play games have microtransactions, but as long as they are fair and less exploitative, it won't alienate a lot of fans.

One AAA company like Ubisoft claimed that microtransactions make their paid games fun, but I argue that they don't, especially when they are predatory. When they implemented microtransactions into a paid game, that's an issue as well. They do this to pressure players into making extra purchases on a game they already purchased. That's why many people favor indies now as they have less money. And one indie title that won Game of the Year last year was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. That could teach AAA a lesson for putting the emphasis on greed.

You must fight both the poor side of the player base that say full experiences are the best things ever and nothing can ever put extra purchases in it to the rich side of the player base that would be delighted to pay money on everything. Grabbing the interests of both sides of the player base is an extremely difficult practice. And sadly, there is a company that took a crack of developing their free-to-play fighting game, but landed in a very awkward spot that makes it worse than a gacha mechanic and pay-to-win scenarios.

After the release of Sora from Kingdom Hearts in Smash Ultimate, WB Games brought on Player First Games and developed their free-to-play platform fighter with characters from Warner Bros' IPs, MultiVersus. So this game has made a brilliant entrance, being the renowned game on its time in Open Beta, ranging from setting up its tournament at Evo to winning Best Fighting Game at the Game Awards. Then the Open Beta servers were put into hibernation to prepare the game for launch in 2024.

How the game failed miserably is one possible explanation. And it's not shifting to Unreal Engine 5, releasing characters we didn't wish for like the Banana Guard or renaming Beetlejuice "Betelgeuse". No, the real source of MultiVersus' faiure and alienating a LOT of players is microtransactions at their predatory level.

When it comes to grinding, when MultiVersus relaunched, microtransactions were taken to the predatory level when they removed Gold, the game's free currency that is used to unlock characters, palettes and perks, to pressure players to pay money for Gleamium to unlock characters, palettes, lives and even low in rarity skins like the Friday the 13th mask, a shark head, possession with dark energy from Trigon, summer outfits, being imbued with the cosmic energy and more. The Fighter and Perk currencies they replaced Gold with, none of them can unlock palettes or low rarity time-limited skins or earnable through grinding daily and weekly missions or finishing matches. This is called a pay-to-progress scenario.

WB Games couldn't maintain a great player base from the Beta, and even though they announced the Season 2 trailer before Mortal Kombat 1 Top 6 at Evo and Nevercake made an ad about the game and an explanation on how Rifts work, they still struggled with sustaining a decent player base. And even in the case of Season 4, there are dozens upon dozens of players alienated from playing the game due to even more exploitative monetization mechanics. This practice exposed why WB Games had to sunset the game after five Seasons and how it became a commercial failure. During the game's full release, WB Games has completely dropped the ball by taking microtransactions too far. That ball is the game's success in Open Beta.

The key takeaway here is that Gold, MultiVersus' free currency in the Beta, right? The key takeaway is that Gold was the only thing that made MultiVersus so renowned during the Beta. When Gold was removed, MultiVersus became a commercial failure that led to being permanently shut down and delisted from the store. As it turned out, it wasn't just MultiVersus that became a commercial failure, but Supervive as well, the MOBA and battle royale hybrid game as well; also a commercial failure at launch and apparently, it's not microtransactions that caused it.

I find it ironic that Mightykeef, a black comedian, would make an emotional skit to cover that, with Nintendo reacting to MultiVersus shutting down and to be honest, I expected that to drop because of the Harry Potter part and the, "I'm gonna need you to never do that **** again, my boy" line and boy howdy, that one was just... a rude thing for him to say, but didn't even use "pal" or "this means."

What is also funny to me is that when MultiVersus comes out, Nintendo became so jealous that Warner Bros. is trying to claim everything that they built just by beating 89 characters, which is the number of characters Smash Ultimate has, especially when it's multi-platform and has rollback netcode Smash Ultimate didn't have, to try to become the new lead company of a platform fighter. However, it has stopped at the same number of characters Brawl has being 35 characters and couldn't beat Smash Ultimate's 89-character roster. It fell short by 54 characters because the game had to be sunset. It's not even close to the number of characters Smash Ultimate has.

See, Harry Potter is not in the game and he never will be along with other characters I wished for like Godzilla, Daffy Duck, Furiosa and even Barbie, because since Warner Bros. is shifting their business to bringing their collaborations to Fortnite, generally meaning that the characters from their IPs are gonna be used as skins, including new Scooby-Doo! skins that came to Fortnitemares last year, and Player First Games is shut down in a way to focus on Mortal Kombat, Harry Potter, DC and Game of Thrones, MultiVersus will never again see the light of day and these characters I wished for will be used as skins in Fortnite. It's bad enough that Crash Team Rumble prematurely ceased active development after three seasons, but at least it's not sunset, though.

This just tells me that Player First Games didn't just priortize monetization. They are also tone-deaf, acting like little children and jamming their ears and screaming, "La la la, I'm not listening!" as players deliver feedback to them, and decided to shut down their game after five seasons like weaklings. Seriously, seeing that the game is going to shut down makes me want to say, "No! Please don't shut down the game! I'm begging you!" or grab a 2x4 and smash myself in the head with it multiple times, especially when there are a lot of characters I wished for. Heck, they could pass it on to NetherRealm Studios to revive the game and they got Injustice 3 in the works. Now, it might be MultiVersus 2, but I'm not ruling that possibility out.

The Metacritic score for MultiVersus is a 75 out of 100 based on a total of 36 critic reviews across three platforms, making this game generally favorable to be met with positivity. It was posted when the game comes into Open Beta. Even with microtransactions during full release, the game was not universally hated. The decision to end all further support on the game was met with widespread disappointment and sadness, especially when they purchased the third tier of the Founder's Pack that offers a number of character tickets that is overkill. In fact, for a lot of people, that was their favorite game and they made a petition to convince Warner Bros. to continue support on the game.

You can't put the game into the Beta phase with the free currency and replace it with new currencies that have limited ways to earn them and can't be used to buy low rarity skins at launch to provide predatory monetization tactics to alienate a lot of players. That's the only thing that has ruined what could've been a phenomenal crossover platform fighter like it was in the Beta that was better, especially when it's being multi-platform with seamless features outside the Nintendo line of consoles and having rollback netcode. Gold being the free currency is what made MultiVersus so phenomenal in the Beta.

When it comes to making a free-to-play fighting game, how do you develop a free-to-play fighting game that caters the best experience while also not alienating players? Well, Riot has laser-focused in on what made the Alpha Lab playtests so appealing. They taken that full potential from the Alpha Labs and amplified and multiplied it instead of breaking it by implementing aggressive monetization mechanics. Bringing new ways to earn Credits can take that full potential from the Alpha Lab playtests and make it shine when the game launches on console.

What I said above stated that again, Riot has laser-focused in on what made the Alpha Lab playtests so appealing. And instead of fragmenting and borderline priortizing monetization, they polished and multiplied what made the Alpha Lab playtests so appealing to a broader audience. New ways to earn Credits like combo trials would take that full potential from the Alpha Lab playtests and make it shine, so marketing-wise, they honored the Alpha Lab playtests with one butt to kick. However, now that they sort of alienated some of the people who are still fans of MultiVersus even during full release, but this is where the story kind of fixes that.

Riot has listened to the players' feedback during the course of the Alpha Lab playtests and embraced that trope that has been used in recent media. That made players very satisfied with how the developers were able to listen to players so that it can be the best it can be.

Also, if you don't know what Credits is, I'll explain what it is. Credits is 2XKO's free currency that is used to unlock Champions, chromas, stages and avatar cosmetics and has all ways to earn them for free, like finishing matches in Casual and Ranked lobbies, completing the lessons in Tutorial and grinding daily and weekly missions. Riot has thought about the predatory monetization tactics WB Games has implemented to produce pay-to-progress scenarios that alienated a lot of players during the game's full release and went the extra mile to improve how Credits are earned by adding new ways to earn them like completing combo trials.

Plus, to give you a small insight on how new Champions and stages become available to purchase with Credits, starting in Season 1, new Champions become available to unlock with 10,000 Credits once their first three weeks is up while new stages become available to unlock with 7,500 Credits when the Season is up, indicating that we can unlock new characters and stages without ever being pressured to pay real money. Grinding weekly and daily missions and finishing combo trials would speed up the process of unlocking every character and stage before the Season is up.

Implying that this free practice is gonna make 2XKO so appealing, thinking about that one form of predatory monetization mechanics WB Games put into MultiVersus to dishonor the Beta. And that one form of exploitative monetization mechanics is removing the free currency and pressuring players to pay money for premium currency to unlock characters, time-limited rare and uncommon skins and palettes to create pay-to-progress scenarios when none of the new currencies that replaced the free currency with are earned through grinding weekly and daily missions and finishing matches or can be used to unlock rare and uncommon skins.

See, Riot didn't just honor the game's Alpha Lab playtests. They also honored the concept of the game's full potential so much that it became a core backbone of the FGC. They even went as far as making balance changes to the whole cast to get everything prepared for for competitive play at Frosty Faustings XVIII to be the kickoff event for the 2026 Competitive Series and even making me wonder if Illaoi is straight up Hawaiian since Yasuo is Japanese, which she is, courtesy of Ooga Booga, the Dreamcast game that is a Hawaiian game to apply to her being on the SEGA side at the moment.

But how did it perform in practice? According to Metacritic, the PC version scored an 81 out of 100 based on five critic reviews, the PS5 version scored a 79 out of 100 based on eight critic reviews and the Xbox version has no critic reviews yet. The average score for 2XKO is an 80 out of 100 based on a total of 13 critic reviews, making this the critically acclaimed and phenomenal League of Legends fighting game, so critically, this game has continued its potential from the Alpha Lab playtests that Riot has learned from MultiVersus' commercial failure that led to a premature shutdown after five seasons. However, VGChartz don't have the numbers for 2XKO since it's a free-to-play fighting game, but with Caitlyn, Season 1, console launch, the very high demand of Katarina and competitive play ensuring a very strong growth, that is more than enough to guarantee a commercial success and a brighter future if you catch my drift.

With everything said and done, here's the main point I would like to make. There are some companies that try to figure out how to make a free-to-play live service fighting game that continues its success from the Beta. WB Games made their free-to-play fighting game that is a platform fighter with their IPs battling each other. It became a success and achieved its full potential in the Beta. However, when the game was fully released, that full potential from the Beta was broken because they dishonored the Beta with priortizing monetization and ignoring players' feedback given during the Beta, which became the leading downfall.

But thankfully, Riot has learned from this enigma. They made a free-to-play live service fighting game that continued its success from the Alpha Lab playtests, by leaving the free currency alone and adding new ways to earn them and listening to the players' feedback, meaning that now, they have the blueprints of a commercially successful free-to-play fighting game.

Development and content choices to create future free-to-play fighting games, meaning that if and when a free-to-play live service platform fighter goes into production, they now know how to learn from MultiVersus' commercial failure and untapped potential and make a successful platform fighter. They can simply implement the free currency in the game from the get-go of the game's development to unlock characters and palettes, launch the game with it and leave it alone. They don't have to replace it with new currencies that can't be earned through finishing matches and grinding missions or retool it from the ground up. The game's free currency is already done and how the Beta in MultiVersus was so appealing.

Not only that. Riot has went the extra mile to make 2XKO worthy of unleashing its full potential in the FGC and in the competitive scene and opened up to limitless creativity, meaning that if other companies behind their free-to-play games like Hi-Rez, Blizzard or any other company plans to develop a free-to-play live service fighting game, they'll be able to learn from MultiVersus' commercial failure and not make microtransactions predatory so that their game would succeed commercially. They can use 2XKO as a leading example of a commercially successful free-to-play live service fighting game still having that free currency implemented from the get-go.

Because of the reasons alone, I think 2XKO has literally changed everything in the game industry, by being a free-to-play live service fighting game that has the free currency from the Beta. MultiVersus' commercial failure came from priortizing monetization at launch to dishonor the Beta. It became a lesson learned by the other companies of the game industry. The first company that learned from it is Riot Games with the entry of 2XKO being a commercially successful free-to-play fighting game that honored its Beta with leaving the free currency alone.

While all of this sounds great, there is a bit of a silver-lining to all this. If WB Games and Player First Games left the Gold currency alone and added new ways to earn them like grinding daily and weekly missions instead of making monetization exploitative, then maybe MultiVersus wouldn't be sunset prematurely, because if monetization is exploitative at launch, that could alienate a lot of fans, rendering the game a commercial failure.

Now, this is important to remember that 2XKO's commercial and critical success is to train other companies and how to make successful free-to-play live service fighting games. They can take what they learn from Riot and apply it to future games and sustain the decent levels of marketing hype experienced in the Beta.

And to make the news even better, there is an indie tag fighter that is basically an "indie" 2XKO with characters from various Saturday AM titles. I have a post that talks about it. If you're interested in reading it, here's the link.

https://rpggameroom.blogspot.com/2026/01/saturday-am-battle-manga-indie-2xko-in.html

Saturday AM: Battle Manga - An Indie 2XKO in Developement?!

So, we came across something in the indie game department. It's seemingly an indie 2v2 tag fighter that is an "indie" 2XKO, but with characters from Saturday AM titles. Let's jump right in.

Before I begin, I want to say Happy New Year to each and every one of you. We closed out 2025 and rang in 2026 very strong. Here's to another great year.

But today, I want to mention now is something I came across is the new indie 2v2 tag fighter that is, in a sense, an indie 2XKO. That's right, an indie 2XKO. Son Studios has started development of their 2v2 crossover tag fighter, Saturday AM: Battle Manga. It is a 2v2 tag fighter that features a diverse roster of characters from various Saturday AM titles like Apple Black, Clock Striker, Hammer, Soul Beat and many more.

Right off the bat, the trailer opens up with Saturday AM manga dropping. As we ripped through the trailer, we saw the dramatic zoom when a launcher and a grounder land like in Dragon Ball FighterZ. The game's development cycle starts out with the first four characters being Sano from Apple Black, Cast from Clock Striker, Stud from Hammer and Dante from Soul Beat.

The trailer showcased its gorgeous visuals. We saw words pop up in game. That's because of having visuals taken from the English-written manga that is produced in the United States, not in Japan, meaning that they will have fully voiced English VO according to the hub on Steam. In fact, these visuals and the gameplay are so dang gorgeous that they resemble the art style and cel shading from Guilty Gear Xrd that is the start of bringing its visuals and art style to future fighting games. Just look at the visuals here. We also saw Cast kicking some butt with her gauntlet.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised that Cast would be inspired by Vi and Ekko down the line. I mean, she is quote unquote black and scrappy like Ekko. I think that's something that Ezreal could have if he ever comes to 2XKO. The trailer ends with telling that the game's demo is coming soon, so we'll have to wait and find out when we're gonna play this 2XKO-esque indie 2v2 crossover tag fighter and its demo.

We seen crossover fighting games and they're are always so magical, especially in the case of BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle. However, nothing has ever got as popular as it did with Guilty Gear Strive. Even so, we lost our crossover fighting game with Shonen Jump characters because the game's quality became dull. Thankfully, the one crossover fighting game we're getting is being developed by an indie dev. There are two reasons why this game is being developed by an indie developer and why it's a good thing.

The first reason is to have less money. They tend to avoid providing microtransactions and have their games reasonably priced so that players wouldn't spend extra money on a game they already purchased or spend $70 games.

The second reason is so that devs can have the freedom to develop this game however they wish and however they want. Without the constraints of a AAA studio, they can be able to take creative risks to bring unique innovations to this game like making it have up to four players to provide Duo Play on both offline and online to make it truly an indie 2XKO with Saturday AM characters.

I think what's really cool is that since Cast is inspired by Ekko and Vi because of the gauntlets and being scrappy, we can see future characters that could be inspired by the characters in the current roster in 2XKO, like Darius, Ahri, Warwick, Blitzcrank, Jinx, Illaoi and even Caitlyn Kiramman, which would also be cool for one of the Saturday AM characters that wields a rifle and a pistol that fires a bola, something that Caitlyn never has in League of Legends as it's an innovative approach. And Katarina, though she is not in the roster yet, but she is confirmed though. It's Sofdec and ADX being integrated into it. But one character that uses a hammer is Stud from Hammer, and if Poppy comes to 2XKO, she'll take some of the playstyle from Stud.

Since Evo 2026 is in order, the developers who are developing this game could attend there to give us a development update regarding it and possibly revealing new characters during Friday's Evo Showcase. We saw updates for a bunch of fighting games in the Evo Showcase, so Battle Manga could be showcased there in Evo. See, Evo is the E3 for fighting games that became the source of the ever-thriving FGC. In fact, it's the summertime Christmas for fighting game fans across the globe that provides fighting game news, reveals, demos and booths for games that are not out yet.

But the demo version of Saturday AM: Battle Manga is not the only thing that is coming in 2026 because a lot of things are also coming in 2026 and I have the post that talks about it. If you're interested in seeing what is on the docket for fighting game fans in 2026, here's the link below. Have a happy 2026, everyone.

https://rpggameroom.blogspot.com/2025/12/2026-is-big-for-fighting-games.html