As of the latest news post, HGC (the main esports league for HotS) and Heroes of the Dorm (collegiate tournament) are being cancelled for 2019. In addition, the team has been downsized, and though further events and heroes are promised, it’s said ‘the cadence will change’.
It’s very frustrating and upsetting to read this when it feels like HotS has spent the last 2 years really coming into its own with a promise of further things down the line. Clearly, management handing down austerity measures is hurting our favourite games. And of course, thing isn’t profitable, so you cut it, so it stagnates further until the plug is pulled. Setting the game up ‘for long-term sustainability’ reads like ‘maintenance mode’.
I wish I could say ‘well the game will still be around for a while’ - and it most likely will be, for years even! - but I can’t shake the sad feeling that this is the beginning of the end.
I wish I could say ‘when it’s over I’ll migrate to LoL or something’ but the reality is that HotS identified and catered to a niche in the moba genre, and when it winds down, well, there won’t really be anything there to replace it.
It was good, you guys. Thanks for everything, and good luck with whatever you’re working on next.
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Yay, that means we will get a lot of awesome mobile games, how I love Blizzard for doing this! [/sarcasm]
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Not a big suprise, seems the same of what happened to Paragon from Epic Games. They were making more money on Fortnite so they decided to move developers and stop with Paragon.
I can’t even say whats the main reason and at this point I don’t want to know nor do I think we will ever find out. But it does break my heart.
I never liked watching much esports. But HGC had something I felt I can blend into. The casters the players and the heroes alone. I have so many memories watching. Example, JayPL one of if not the best Tank to ever jump into hots. The king of stitches. And if you knew him and saw him pick that hero, you knew there was going to be some “play time”. THAT alone made me play him more and more. And now he is my best and fav hero. The rework made it better for me. Making learn the little things in the game made me want to pursue better in the game example high ranks.
Now there over 50 pro players who have lost there jobs. Arcaner came from Australia for this. People who loved this game even before HGC was a thing when is was smaller groups doing it not even a “It could come back”.
I’ll be honest. No offence but I don’t care what they make next to move the team around. I don’t want to move the LOL or DOTA. And I wont. This game was different and thats the reason I liked it. But I agree that this might be a dark turn for this game. And I really will hate this if its true. I want to see a company take it else were in esports.
The last thing I want to say it this.
Activision Blizzard. Is this really how you want to be seen. I find it hard that this will be seen by anyone but your painting a bad picture for your self. If you are going to keep this game alive then It NEEDS something to people to drive them to play more to get better to be “that guy” Every game has it. And we lost about 50 of them to drive to be. Please dont give up on this game
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^ this. Exchange JayPL/Stitches with Snitch and Greymane but from the bottom of my hearth…this is it.
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First started playing Blizz games with WC2. Have played all of their games since, some for an embarrassing number of hours(/years eeek) of my life. Despite this, first time I’ve ever actually posted on the forums. Last few weeks have been the first time I’ve ever really doubted who Blizzard is. Or, at least, who is making the decisions at Blizzard these days. I wish the the game developers (as in, the people who actually want to make great games for their fans) the very best.
But really think some u-turns are desperately needed in terms of the decision makers at the top deciding to prioritize easy money over their fans who have supported them for decades.
But most importantly, I really hope the HOTS professional community gets some sort of support after apparently (from my limited understanding) having just lost their jobs overnight with no warning or severance…
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Blizz delivered a great christmass present for all hots proplayers.
Moreover they were promoting annual boosts etc and now they provide statement that people bought annual boosts for the game they are not going to develop and invest in too much from now on. Who is doing things like this? For sure this should not be a practice of a global, well known company.
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As someone from former Blizzard members said: Activision will squeeze it dry and there will be more games like Immortal. What did you expect, a happy ending with company, which cannot even provide financial independence?
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I think 1 of the problems is they took to long to “fix” the mm. And when they did, they just made it even worse, because they are so clueless about their own games. They have even said them self, they have shiftet more to mobile games. I stopped spending money on the game, because i don’t think it is worth it. Horrible mm, unbalanced heroes. And i’m still certain they have lowered the xp we gain from a match, to get us to spend money on gems so we can get a booster
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This is the last version of it…with all the problems… ENJOY SUCKER.S… - Activision
I stopped spending money on the game, because i don’t think it is worth it
That’s the only thing Blizzard and the community has in common when it comes to Heroes of the Storm
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Matchmaking and automated silence/ban system were constantly reported by the community. The company did not pay attention on those topics. OK, actually, they did but in a very peculiar way: with every iteration both became worth and worth.
So HotS will lose a lot of players in the coming weeks from its not big player base, the MM will become even worse, waiting time will be more and more, quality of games even lower…
H.O.T.S. R.I.P.
P.S. I can see that the quality of game degraded seriously in last 2 days, either it is due to the new MM or end-of-life announcement or both.
Just sharing my own thoughts here.
Today I woke up and was shocked about the news that the Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm wouldn’t return in 2019. Out of all Blizzard esports leagues, I enjoyed watching the HGC the most. The casters like Khaldor, Gilly or Trikslyr did an amazing job and I feel so sorry for them. By watching the pros play (and thanks to the in-depth analyses after each match) I managed to pick up some skills myself which eventually helped me in my own ranked matches.
I think that you don’t need to deny that the HGC wasn’t profitable, but cancelling the esports scene entirely instead of cutting the budget… Boy, that hurt. On top of that, moving some developers away from the Heroes of the Storm team to other projects worries me; updates already weren’t as frequent as they used to be, but now it’s gonna slow down even more. No doubt that there are gonna be new awesome heroes, skins and themed events in the future, but compared to what other MOBA games have to offer, it will be difficult for Heroes to keep up.
At this point I am deeply concerned about the survivability of the game. No official esports scene at all and fewer updates will have a strong impact on the game’s already below-average playerbase. The current queue times are already way too high, and compared to titles like Diablo III, Heroes of the Storm isn’t a game you can just play alone all the time.
But this is all theory. Regardless of the current situation, we should embrace the future and just appreciate all the content we received in the past few years. I’m sure the Heroes team will continue to care for their beloved game, and we should be looking forward to that. 
(I would like to point out again that this is my personal opinion, and that MVPs are not Blizzard officials.)
Pachimari
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As someone who was in tehnical Alpha,spent 40-50€ in total for this game and havent played in month i think i got some foresight towards where this is heading.I had a blast with hots.But seems to me WoW is in bad shape,hots is geting cut,Sc2 is pretty mutch dead.You can stop calling this company Blizzard and start refferencing them Activision.Good luck with that whole mobile gaming,and i bet they wount use the extra founds to invest in future titles,not with AV a company who ditched Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk series and is moving on Blizzard IP’s to suck them dry and then dump them.
Il reinstal LoL and start suggesting Munster hunter world to my coworkers and irlf at christmas.
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I came to Hots after Dawngate passed away, I have enjoyed greatly the variety and creativity when it came to Hots compared to other Mobas. I was just getting back into playing the game again after focusing mostly on wow but now after reading the statement put out I am sad confused and angry at the decesions being made and how they have been handled. The casters found out at the same time as everyone else, how the hell do you show you care as a company when you suddenly fire a group of employees without any warning. Then you have the nerve to put out a statement with this very line near the end “While we don’t make these decisions lightly, we do look to the future excited about what the decisions will mean for our other live games and all the projects we have in the works.”. So first you kill peoples jobs then you kill the game this community cared for and then you say your excited about killing off the game? Goddam I feel bad for the people left on Hots, you guys were really starting to perfect this game and then this happens. I guess the golden days of Blizzard are really over.
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Its a total shame that HGC has been pulled, as for me the thing I loved most about HotS was watching the Splits, MSB and HGC and all the pro teams in action, it made for a easy to watch and enjoy esport stream (I cant be doing with FPS ones where you follow 1 person and they die from something that you didn’t even see)
Even so still sad to see this end as from my fave team #Dignitas to some of the bonkers casting from Trik and Kaldor or Grubby (man these guys could have me in stiches )to some downright insane matches between the best teams in world it will be a shame to say goodbye.
i never bothered watching any of the streams, but even so, I recognize that the “competitive scene” is what carries a game like this in the PR it does.
Closing it down means you are giving up on the game, as evidenced by other changes you are doing. This will have a cascade effect and I can see no justification for people to want to bother using real money on this now, when the end of the game have already been written in fiery letters by the company.
I can’t really say I’m surprised.
-Fiasco with Diablo: Immortal
-Inept patching issues causing the game after the patch to be more broken than before (tech forums is filled with after patch issues resulting in the game being completely inoperable, leading people to uninstall and reinstall the game entirely)
-incompetent update applying (graphical glitches being there for two seasons without a care in the world)
-inability to implement MMR system that is FAIR
-constant breaking the missing player AI (yes you tweaked it to the point it’s competitive only to casio calculator, and still the calculator wins)
-Heroes of the Storm is the only MOBA game that has not revealed it’s MMR system formula. 4 years and we are still in the guesswork (3+1 year in testing)
-Unintelligible changes in the game systems that clearly make no sense and were made to promote developers skills only because they serve no purpose.
-Constant juggling on heroes ability to do their roles ending in them being NOT what they were advertised as or are supposed to do.
-Backing out from the “All content for all players” policy and return to exclusive and insanely expensive cosmetics.
-Change logs that come out 3 days after the patch (GG)
-Absolute zero communication and UNFRIENDLY user support.
This is all a result of incompetent management.
I personally am shocked this game lasted as long as it did, although I like it and had a fair amount of fun with it. We should expect only major updates again with patches and some new content every six months from now on.
This is of course Activision’s handiwork because Blizzard made a game for mobiles that not a single person asked for and the backlash that came from it.
It’s really not hard to admit a mistake and back out of it.
But they will never do it, cuz American Pride.
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No doubt… i know you had like -4mil balance after HGC
We all are… you just start a major change of the game… didnt finish it and now…bye bye…deal with it. A lot a reworks needs to be done and…
I dont know the SC2 stats at Blizz vs Activision but sooner or latter will destroy every Blizz franchise
With no viable ideeas of fixing the game and make it more competitive in EA and focusing more on China mobile games… what about all the pro players? does Blizz actually think that they will start play rank and stream for a living?
Another piece of news where the fact that blizzard is really out of touch with their playerbase shines. Trying to spin this as a positive thing? Moving the devs to other projects should be a good thing? That is flipping insane.
Preaching about how every dev team is full of passion @ blizzcon, then just moving people around so much from whatever project is next. Whoever makes these decisions clearly is not in touch with the playerbase at all and has no passion themselves.
The only thing i take away from this announcement is that whenever a new more profitable lane opens up you abandon your current games to pursue that, even when the first game isn’t losing you money.
Not making all the possible money in the world seems to be fine enough reason for abandoning games now. How am i supposed to get invested in anything new knowing this?
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