Riot Games has a very similar price model to MultiVersus. Take that as you will
2XKO’s early access finally arrived earlier today on PC, which brought new features and content to the game including Teemo and Warwick as champions plus much more.
This launch of the League of Legends fighting game also of course added the in-game store and Battle Pass too, so what are the prices looking like out the gate? — Well they ain’t particularly cheap.
As a free-to-play fighting game, it was expected to see some higher prices for paid content, and that is indeed the case here.
We were a bit hopeful that 2XKO wouldn’t be as expensive as the failed MultiVersus in terms of its skins, characters and content, but Riot Games is pricing things very, very similarly to the shuttered Warner Bros. platform fighter.
There is at least a free currency that players can use to buy things like champions, costume colors and more though we’ll have to see what that grind is like to acquire them — plus there’s a cap as to how much you can hold.
So let’s break down the various currencies and paid content that’s available here at launch as well as what it would cost to buy everything here now.
You get the original six characters for free between Ahri, Braum, Darius, Ekko, Illaoi and Yasuo, which means that Blitzcrank, Jinx, Teemo, Vi and the newly revealed Warwick will need to be unlocked.
This can be done with the one free Champion Token you’re given after completing the initial tutorial, with 10,000 Credits or 1,000 KO points.
Players can at least use every character whether they own them or not in Training Mode or the offline client.
Costume colors for your unlocked champions cost 6,500 Credits or 500 KO Points each.
Credits are the main free currency in 2XKO, which can primarily be earned by completing missions, tutorials, combo trials and playing online matches.
Right now, there are three daily missions and three weekly missions provided (plus some bonus ones) that offer 250 Credits per daily and 750 per weekly, so you can earn between 750 and 3,000 in a day through missions (the latter if you haven’t already completed the weeklies).
And you can’t hoard Credits either, as there’s a cap of 12,000 you can hold at a time — so you’re going to be essentially forced to spend them at some point.
KO Points are 2XKO’s premium currency that can be purchased in different bundles in the shop starting at $5 for 500 points up to $100 for 11,500 points, so without the bonuses received starting in the $20 packs, you’re getting around 100 points per dollar.
The Legendary Skin Sets available now in 2XKO’s shop are 2,000 KO Points each, so that makes them slightly under $20 if you buy the 2,200-point bundle.
They come with the costume, a second color, an avatar outfit, a sticker and a profile card.
These store items will apparently rotate out every two weeks with Boom Boom Blitzcrank, Dynasty Ahri, Zombie Slayer Jinx and God-King Darius featured currently.
2XKO is also offering three different Starter Edition bundles that all at least include some Champion Tokens and KO Points though they certainly aren’t cheap.
The Standard pack is $30 and contains 4 tokens, 2,000 KO Points and an exclusive Arcane player card.
Their Deluxe pack is $60 and includes 8 tokens, 3,000 KO Points, 3 avatar costumes plus the player card from Standard.
Finally if you want the actual Arcane skins for Vi, Jinx and Ekko, you need to buy the Ultra pack for a whopping $100 that also comes with 5,000 KO points, 8 tokens, a special KO animation, stickers and the items from the other bundles.
At least if you add up everything in the Ultra pack between the skins, KO Points and Champion Tokens, you are technically getting more like $200 “worth” of content (even if you’ll have to wait probably a full year to use all of those tokens).
There’s also the Season 0 Battle Pass in 2XKO now too that offers three different paid versions as well as some free rewards, which will be available until the end of the year.
You’ll need to purchase at least the Standard pass for 1,000 KO Points that’ll get you up to level 61 while the Deluxe pass for 2,000 KO Points includes 10 level ups up to level 70.
If you want everything, however, you’ll need the Ultra pass for 3,500 KO Points that comes with Warwick, an extra skin for him, colors, more items and the rest of the content from the previous passes.
To get all of the main content at 2XKO at launch, you’d have to buy the $100 bundle plus 6,500 more KO Points, which would bring the grand total to around $160 (with like 5 Champion Tokens left over).
There haven’t been too many fighting games that have attempted to run the free-to-play model from launch and even fewer examples of them finding success like Killer Instinct, so it’ll be interesting to see if the fighting game and League communities will bite at these prices.
2XKO Executive Producer Tom Cannon said the developers will be looking at what sorts of content players are purchasing, which they aren’t, and how much progress they’re making in game to adjust things accordingly in the future.
Perhaps that means prices could be lowered at some point, though, we’re not putting a lot of faith in that right now.
At the very least, the bulk of the premium content are cosmetics that make no real impact on the gameplay, and you can try every character extensively before buying them.
2XKO will live and die ultimately by how much they sell and make Riot Games money after the company worked on the game for six years.
