Players who are fed up with 2XKO may find it quite difficult to uninstall the game, but there’s an easy fix to this issue as we explain how exactly to go about it.
Most live-service games give lapsed players lots of incentive to return, offering up extra rewards. Riot Games also makes it hard to ever leave. Players from across the publisher’s portfolio of games have long suffered from the inability to easily uninstall their games.
Thankfully, there is a way to do so. It just requires players to get a bit crafty and wise up to how Riot Games’ titles work on one’s PC.
2XKO is difficult to get off a PC’s hard drive due to its proprietary anti-cheat system, Vanguard. But it can be worked around.
Vanguard was originally developed by Riot Games for use in its tactical hero shooter, Valorant. While the game still has some cheaters, Vanguard has undoubtedly proven to be one of the better anti-cheat engines in the genre. When a leak saw League of Legends’ source code distributed among bad actors and cheat makers, Riot Games added Vanguard to its popular MOBA. While this process has had some major hiccups, the implementation of a new anti-cheat engine was likely needed due to the leak.
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The trouble with Vanguard is that the engine works at the kernel level of PCs to preempt aimbots, wallhacks, and other nefarious cheats. This is a major security and technical concern. Kernel-level security software can potentially brick a PC, as seen in 2024 when a bugged update for a cybersecurity program shut down airports around the globe.
This has made Vanguard a touchy subject, even among veteran players. The fact that it’s the cause of the uninstalling issues in 2XKO doesn’t help matters.
Players need to manually shut down Vanguard and the Riot Games launcher before attempting to uninstall 2XKO. If this isn’t done, players won’t be able to fully uninstall the game.
Here’s the step-by-step process for getting around this on Windows:
Because Vanguard launches before Windows boots on PCs, players need to actively choose to close it. If it is running, 2XKO, League of Legends, and Valorant are all seen as running by Windows, preventing players from uninstalling any of these games.
Alternatively, players can choose to shut down Vanguard and the Riot Games launcher through the task manager. To open the task manager, right-click on the task bar and click “Task manager.” The task manager shows everything that the PC is running, which is inevitably an incredibly long list of processes.
To quickly find Vanguard among those many options, click on any process in the Processes tab and press V on the keyboard until it highlights Vanguard. Once it is highlighted, click on the “end task” button. From there, players can choose to uninstall 2XKO.
Players who have 2XKO and other Riot Games titles should note that once Vanguard is closed, they will have to restart their PC in order to play those games again. Vanguard being closed prevents players from opening League of Legends or Valorant until a full local restart is performed.
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