Reports: Riot cancelled Smash Bros-style game “Pool Party”

Riot Games has reportedly cancelled a Smash Bros-style platform fighter that was in development in May, according to reports.

Riot Games has openly stated its desire to create the best media in a variety of game genres, and it's already known that they're developing an MMO behind the scenes. The additional titles in development don't stop there, with a platform fighter codenamed "Pool Party" being cancelled by the League of Legends developer recently, according to reports by Mikhael Klimentov of ReaderGrev.

According to ReaderGrev's reports, Pool Party was a platform fighter being worked on by between 60-80 employees. The project was shuttered due to worries from executive staff that the failure of Warner Brothers' Multiversus, a platform fighter with characters from WB IP, signalled a poor future for the project.

Pool Party was initially envisioned as a hardcore fighter, but later transitioned to have more casual-friendly mechanics and aspects. This project was separate from 2XKO, Riot's 2D tag fighter game that is slated for release in 2025.

Klimentov reports that approximately half of the employees working on the project were given offers to relocate inside of Riot to other teams and projects. Of the remaining half, most were looking for positions on the internal Riot job board, and another 10 were neither reassigned or looking for new positions.

Many fans were surprised to hear Riot was developing two games in the FGC area at once, with comments on social media expressing surprise and worry that Riot was spreading its resources thing trying to make games in every genre.

In a statement to ReaderGrev, Riot said that projects starting up and spinning down was a regular occurrence, but did not confirm or deny the existence of Pool Party. Fans looking for their Riot fighting game fix should sign up for the 2XKO Alpha Lab occurring later in 2024.