Only able to play Brawl, no idea why !

Okay so, for the last few days I have been completely unable to play Heroes of the Storm aside from Brawl. I’ve check my ports, run repair, cleaned out the game cache - hell I’ve even completely deleted my entire BattleNet folder and re-installed HoTS. Still can’t play Vs AI, Quick Match, Draft or Ranked. I can rather oddly play custom games as well but everything else says ‘Game mode is disabled’.

Any and all advice on what to do would be appreciated: I love this game and it’s really irritating to not be able to play the normal game modes with my mates!

Good morning SteelRex,

Try and delete the Variables.txt from the Documents\Heroes of the Storm file path. Once done, open the Blizzard Desktop App and click the blue logo at the top left. Click on Settings and from the new window, click on Game Settings. Find Heroes of the Storm, and click on Reset In-Game Options.

Once done, start the game up again and test it out.

Kind regards


What’s your opinion?

Done it and there’s been no change, still says play mode is disabled for everything aside from brawl and customs!

Hello SteelRex,

Please check your DNS and set up the Google ones if yours are different; the instructions are available here. Occasionally, deleting again the Variables.txt after this step can also help - you’ll find it within your Documents\Heroes of the Storm file path.



Feedback? https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Vyraneer

Still no change, really getting miffed because it’s starting to look like I’m running out of options. I even tried re-setting my connection after the DNS suggestion on advice from a friend - still no change!

I’m sorry to read that! Please try these steps as well when you have a moment:

  • Close Heroes and Blizzard Battle.net app; terminate all Blizzard/Battle.net/Agent processes from Task Manager
  • Press Windows + R keys and type %programdata%
  • Delete Battle.net and Blizzard Entertainment folders
  • Close Windows Explorer, restart Blizzard app and see if the issue persists

Hope this will help you!



Feedback? https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Vyraneer

Okay so I deleted both files but one of them persisted - is this supposed to happen or could this maybe be the problem? The file in question is the one titled ‘Blizzard Entertainment’ . I tried launching the game after this but it was still saying the same thing of ‘this play mode is currently disabled’.