Gaming Leadership is Out of Touch

Summary

The speaker argues that high-level corporate leadership across the gaming industry—especially major publishers—often behaves as if it’s “out of touch” with game communities and realistic market expectations. They claim executives treat feedback and performance targets as though they operate in a different reality, which can lead to expensive projects that are effectively doomed from the start.

Riot’s Example: 2XKO (formerly Project L)

A central example is Riot Games’ fighting game 2XKO. The video claims Riot invested large sums of money and resources over years, but released the game with a player base far below what Riot reportedly believed was necessary to justify ongoing “games-as-a-service” support.

The speaker further claims that 2XKO has now reached a point where Riot can no longer support it economically, and that Riot is ending active development/support starting in December.

Unrealistic Success Metrics for Fighting Games

The argument emphasizes that the required scale of success—described as needing hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of monthly active users—is unrealistic for fighting games as a genre.

The speaker cites Street Fighter 6 as a rare “wild exception” rather than the norm, pointing to its peak Steam player count of just over 100,000 to illustrate how even a genre’s best mainstream breakthrough cannot match the runaway numbers needed to sustain a highly costly service model.

Because fighting games demand significant time and effort to learn (and therefore tend to have narrower appeal than mass-market shooters or casual games), the speaker argues Riot’s expectations were disconnected from the audience reality.

Management and Strategic Critiques

Beyond the numbers, the speaker critiques Riot’s management decisions, including:

• Allegedly failing to commit to long-term fighting game support, which the fighting game community heavily values.
• Suggesting the lack of experience will likely cause the game to decline once updates stop.
• Indicating internal misalignment within the project—such as no unified strategy and disagreement among the team.
• Claiming Riot evaluated 2XKO against benchmarks more suited to other Riot genres (e.g., League of Legends or Valorant), even though 2XKO is a different genre.

Tryndamere’s Remarks and the “Earlier Launch” Counterpoint

The speaker references remarks from Riot co-founder Tryndamere, who reportedly framed Street Fighter 6’s success as affecting Riot’s window of opportunity for making a major impact.

The speaker counters that even if 2XKO had launched earlier, it likely still wouldn’t have achieved the player counts necessary to become a “Fortnite-level” phenomenon—and that Street Fighter 6 would probably have performed similarly regardless.

Broader Warning: Riot’s Upcoming MMO Plans

Finally, the speaker generalizes the lesson to Riot’s upcoming MMO efforts, warning that MMOs often become “graveyards” for large studios. They question whether Riot can avoid the pattern of launching without sustaining long-term support, especially given how competitive and costly the MMO landscape is.

Presenters/Contributors

• Tryndamere (Riot Games co-founder) — featured/quoted via the Lemonade Stand podcast
• The video narrator/speaker (not named in the subtitles)