2XKO will have an offline mode with all playable champions unlocked, it has been revealed. This is in order to support grassroots tournament organizers eager to run events around the game, but aren’t exactly thrilled about the idea of having to grind out all the champions on multiple accounts.
Revealed during a 2XKO community tour in France earlier this month in a group Q&A, 2XKO executive producer Tom Cannon initially ruminated on how much he should say on the matter, before exclaiming “yeah, why not” and spilling the beans on the mode.
“I know it can be a pain to set up a whole bunch of set-ups during a tournament. We don’t want that to be really hard. We want you to be able to run a tournament without the internet, without having to jump through a bunch of hoops to unlock a bunch of champions.”
“So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to be able to play this game offline, I hope that’s not a spoiler (laughs). There’s going to be a way for you, as a tournament organizer, to have all the champs unlocked without having to grind them out yourself. Now, you won’t get all the content! It’s hard for us to have skins enabled and stuff like that, but at least you’ll be able to play the game in-tournament offline. That’s our selling point.”
“We do want to keep supporting grassroots tournaments, so we want to hear how that goes and what features will help.”
This, for the select few who host fighting game events focused on competition, is potentially a massive win. An always-online fighting game would inevitably run into significant hurdles in such a space. Tournament organizers would not only have to make sure the venue has a stable internet, but would likely have to pay substantial fees to use this internet over several days. In addition, not having to grind out a new character on dozens of separate 2XKO accounts is a life saver for tournament organizers, who otherwise would have to manually unlock new content for the game to be competitively valid.
What is still unclear following this reveal is how this mode would interact with Vanguard Anti-Cheat, Riot Game’s own always-online anti-cheat. Vanguard, which runs the moment you boot your computer up with kernel-level access, cannot be disabled while Riot Games titles are running for League of Legends, Valorant, etc. As such, an offline tournament mode would in theory clash with the intended purpose of Vanguard, assuming this offline mode is booted via the Riot Games launcher like current 2XKO Alpha Lab tests are.
We reached out to Riot Games for a follow-up question on this, and have yet to receive a reply as of publishing this article.
Nonetheless, it’s a cool feature for the inevitable hardcore community for the game, willing to travel out to events in the real world to test their mettle against other players. If I may add some personal editorialising here, I would not expect such a mode to be widely available to the average player. 2XKO, as a free-to-play game, does need to generate revenue from its community obviously. Expect this offline mode to be a rather exclusive offering, so certified tournament runners.
Though, we’ll have to hang back and wait for more updates on this offline mode and more. What do you think of this offline mode? let us know below!