They need a proper campaign mode that slowly teach players how to approach the game.

I do agree with everything you mentioned, but i also think people ignore the stigma fighting games have. I tried getting friends to download a _free game_, with characters they like and autocombos, to play together as a team against other friends, and i got so much "i don't like fighting games they're hard" without even looking at it. Just the words "fighting game" already scare people away

We need to bring back unlocking stuff in fighting games and not just a handful of fighting games doing it. I feel that a lot of these games have really poor gameplay loops that fails to keep the player playing for months at a time, and letting balance patches and dlc drops fill that void.

The skill floor needed to feel properly in control of your character is way higher than other genres. Yes, other genres have movement tech and ability skill checks etc, but those don't feel as necessary, probably due to a combination of intuitiveness and how well games hide what skilled plays look like to people who don't know what to look for

I think the fundamental problem with fighting games in 2026 is that most of the game is simply online play, but multiplayer with any skill gap whatsoever is basically watching a cutscene of your character dying with little to no input from you. Break/burst mechanics don't even come into play. You spend your burst if you're even aware it exists, then the bodying continues. Then you uninstall cause the game didn't like try to trick you into developing the skills you need to be able to hang out in a set.

For me personally, it's because I'm most interested in fast movement oriented anime-style games, but UNIST2 & GGAC+R have a far smaller player base than Street Fighter, Guilty Gear Strive, and Grand Blue Fantasy Rising. So I have to grind forever in order to start having fun in the games I'm most interested in playing. So I keep procrastinating to play them.

people were saying to me before it came out that 2xko wouldn't have problems finding players because the price of entry was "Free", and there were no other f2p fighters so people would go there.

We're so in our bubble in the FGC that nobody wants to admit that 2xko's main competition isn't Street Fighter or Guilty Gear, it's Fortnite or Apex Legends or League. The FGC's size isn't enough to support a f2p game, that's the hard truth we're learning right now.

As a competitive player currently in the Strive 2.0 waiting room and who remembers being a casual as a kid and teenager, I wholeheartedly agree that there's an immense lack of single player content keeping casuals on fighting games. Even in Sm4sh I remember spending countless lunch breaks with my friends playing smash run on 3DS and that shit kept us entertained for ages. I also really do wish fighting games picked up the slack when it came to the speed at which updates come out. Both of those things together would be huge boosts for their popularity. Casuals are by definition the vast majority of a game's playerbase so overemphasising a smaller portion of the playerbase really doesn't work out. Absolute SQinema.

I rather learn about 1000 plus pokemon plus all the mechanics of pokemon than to play a fighting game that I can't connect to

yes all very valid points. I remember playing fighting games all the time as a kid, but truly only when friends came over, it was fun to gloat talk scratch to them, it was a great bonding experience, but as I got older, lost friends & have never really been compelled to play online against people i dont know, i've gotten less reason to boot up fighting games even though I still love them all the same 😢

Fighting games don’t have “pacing” like other multiplayer games have where there is high intense moments and downtime. For example in MOBAs, there are stressful skirmishes and team fights but also downtime like farming and walking around the map for small advantages. In shooters, the intensity is also there but also even when you win or lose a fight there is a period of rest where your team can strategize and position before the next high octane fight. During downtime, the player can interact with the map and their character and essentially “practice the game” during the match. This gives players high neural action but also calming those neurons down for a bit, creating an up and down.

Fighting games don’t have this at all. Each match is very high octane, neurons are constantly firing even if you are away from the opponent. And even if you win or lose you only get like 5 seconds before thrown into round 2. This constant activity will overwhelm casual players. They will fail to realize that the TRUE downtime for fighting games is labbing and practicing but that doesn’t happen DURING the match itself unlike other games. This is why shooters and Mobas are more intuitive to pick up and dont need single player content. It’s because the downtime allows players to ease themselves while active enough to prepare.

Fortnite is the best example, people say battle royales are just walking around but that traveling is the downtime where you gather resources and prep before an encounter. And the encounter is the high action moments before going back into downtime.

accessibility, balance, frame data ect. is all the stuff at the end of the tunnel. Doing cool stuff and lots of content is how to get people into the tunnel in the first place

Killer Instinct 2013 has so many answer to these questions we keep asking. What held it back was being locked on xbox.

The game had really interesting single player options eslecially with the roguelite mode, the whole shadow character thing (they feel more human than any CPU opponent in any FG I've ever played), a rotating cast of free to play characters, reasonable price point, low skill floor super high ceiling AND a very deep and interactive combo system that doesn't just make you eat it and wait. The roster is super varied and the tier list is pretty compressed with almost all characters being viable

Either bring back KI or for the love of god someone draw inspiration from it.

There's a reason a huge amount of fighting game players have started to put time into these games with Smash, MK/Injustice or licensed anime games before branching out into games that are nowhere near as content-rich. For me, it was the Ultimate Ninja series and later the BlazBlue CT visual novel that got me fully hooked.

For every successful F2P shooter that succeeds, there are tens of AAA content-rich paid games that act as a gateway into the mechanics. We can't keep relying on NRS to funnel people into games that have slightly more content than 2XKO. And often times less content than the free edition of GBVSR.

Fighting games are less popular mainly because of the learning curve — not because they’re bad or “too hard,” but because they ask too much, too early.

In most genres (FPS, RPGs), you’re told: attack, jump, stealth — and you’re already playing. You learn the rest naturally as you go. You can be bad and still feel effective.

Fighting games don’t work like that. New players are told “just press this, then this,” but mashing doesn’t always work — and when it does, it stops working fast. Progress isn’t automatic. You still need timing, spacing, execution, defense, counters, punishment, and matchups.

The issue isn’t difficulty — it’s onboarding. Fighting games expect intentional learning from the start, while most modern games reward incidental learning. Add nonstop 1v1 losses (no teammates, no RNG), and the experience becomes stressful instead of fun.

That’s why many newcomers quit early. Fighting games aren’t unpopular because they’re bad — they’re unpopular because they demand commitment before the fun really kicks in.

Don't have anything to add, several people have put words to my thoughts in many different ways. But, I'll say this... I have high hopes for Virtua Fighter 6. It's the first new fighting game in a long, long time being developed by a team that isn't fighting game focused at their core. It was said in an interview that they're shooting for a GOTY nomination. They talk about how the game came about because they finally had an idea for innovation, rather than just making another one. I think, if anynone is in a position with regards to talent and ressources, to take a real crack at fighting games as a good product, Virtua Fighter 6 is something to keep an eye out for.

As more casual fighting game enjoyer, for me the main issue with getting into FG was not having a friend that i can bring into the game to learn it with me. When i finally found someone with the exact same expirence in FG as me (absolute 0) willing to try it out, we got a copy of GGST and just started playing 1v1's and had absolute blast learning mechanics, combos, showing each other the new cool shit we discovered, and did just that for several months. We didn't play online against randoms much, and when we did we would usually stream in discord to each other or look at replays together. To this day we would sometimes boot up the game to beat each other up, but much less then before. I think really big part of why we started playing less was lack of new cool shit to find (at least within our limited mechanical abilities), and waiting months for new balance patches made that an issue. Bullshit region lock forced by CD Project Red on Lucy DLC and Season Pass containing her (we're from Russia) made things even worse

There are 3 simple reasons fighting games aren't popular:
1. Too Expensive
2. Are "lonely" experiences
3. They are too complicated and overwhelming (not too difficult).

Too Expensive: Fighting games release at standard retail price (£50 Bri'sh, $60 American roughly) and sit there roughly until mid way through their first year of dlc releases. That's already a firm commitment of a price for the average person to make, but fighting games are known for having DLC characters/stages/modes released post launch. As such people know that buying a fighting game isn't just the initial price of the game, but also all of that extra DLC which adds up (SF6 Season passes are £25 a piece). So not only is it a big investment, it is also mandatory if you want to compete in any ranked mode as you can't train or test characters without out right purchasing them (at least permanently).

"Lonely" Experience: Fighting games are a 1v1 game. Unlike the recent friendslop titles or even historically the team based nature of FPS/MOBA games, fighting games do not "inherently" offer a social experience with co-operative play. As such it requires the player to actually put in the leg work to interact and form connections with their opponents. Too bad the average ranked experience is playing 1 match and quitting immediately after and getting spammed hatemail because you played "cheap" or the wrong character. Begging your friends to play with you also a problem as outlined above. It's easier to get people to spend $5 on a cheap steam game to play together then asking your friends to invest $30 minimum for only the base game of a fighter. There's more as well but I think you get the idea.

Too complicated, not too difficult:  Booting up a fighting game is often (especially now days) a very overwhelming and strangely vague experience. It has little to do with pulling off combos, but rather understanding how most games systems fundamentally work and why you would use them. Frame data is a relatively new source of information WITHININ games themselves (you used to rely on websites/outside sources for them). Tekken for example has a display for frame data in training mode. Now this part might be easy to understand, low frames = fast attack, fast attack beats slower ones et cetera. Easy right? Now try and remember the frame data of over 101 attacks/strings PER CHARACTER? Alright lets be more realistic, how about the frame data on the core 36 moves used by the average player? Still an overwhelming amount info. What about learning various Roman Cancels in Guilty Gear? Flowcharts? Fighting games require you to often do your own homework to have a chance at getting good, or having a friend teach you (but since Fighting games are lonely you need to get lucky there)

Difficulty is definitely not the problem, I can say that for sure. I played League of Legends for 4 years, starting back when I was a teen with all the time in the world, and after much struggle and actually putting time and thought into it I reached...!!!! Gold rank. Which was, in a generous estimate, the top50% of the playerbase at the time. By comparison, I got to Master Rank in Granblue, top10%, after 2 years in fighting games as an employed adult.

I agree fighting games improving as products would massively help them become more popular, pretty much the most effective strategy. But I don't think they're the why the popularity is low to begin with. Frustratingly, I think the nicheness of FGs is just due to ignorance? Fighting games are labelled as difficult and impenetrable, so most people never even try, or when they do that infamy gives them permission to give up at the first sign of trouble. "Ah, I knew it, it's too difficult, why did I bother." I think this is the case because I see a similar phenomenon happen to soulslikes sometimes. Public perception intimidating people before the genre even has a chance of making it's case.

Also as a competitive 'gamer' and grinder, what fighting games don't really have is a 'shiggles' game mode to cool down in. When I would grind League, or Valorant, or even Melee, after a long grind sesh or before one, we would play the 'fun' game mode to warmup or cooldown. We'd always end League with an aram, or start Valorant with gungame etc. etc.


I guess it's harder for fighting games since it doesn't have the player count to split them up, but a more fun game mode or queue IMO would also be a fun way to increase player retention. Idk maybe 2xko could do a juggernaut iron man game mode or a random juggernaut char game mode, just something where players know there are less stakes.

Ideally it would even be PVE