Major Heroes of the Storm development is officially ending

Blizzard has announced that its MOBA Heroes of the Storm will no longer receive any major updates, as it looks to sunset the title seven years after its release.

The Warcraft developer has been slowing down development on HotS since 2018, when it announced it would be moving some of its developers onto other projects.

Since then, new characters and skins have been added to the game, though there has been little activity since 2020.

In an official statement published on Friday, Blizzard said it would no longer make major additions to Heroes of the Storm, treating it similarly to StarCraft and StarCraft II with only rotations and bug patches.

“This June marks the seven-year anniversary of Heroes of the Storm. Combining legendary characters from all of our universes, it naturally brought players together into a truly unique experience,” the company said.

“Heroes and its community are home to some of the most passionate gamers from around the world and we’re committed to making sure that you can continue to enjoy your adventures through the Nexus.”

The statement continues: “Moving forward we will support Heroes in a manner similar to our other longstanding games, StarCraft and StarCraft II.

“In the future, we’ll continue seasonal rolls and hero rotations, and while the in-game shop will remain operational there are no plans for new for-purchase content to be added. Future patches will primarily focus on client sustainability and bug fixing, with balance updates coming as needed.”

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Speaking in 2019, former Blizzard president Mike Morhaime told VG247 that he believed Heroes of the Storm had struggled because the company was “too late” to embracing the MOBA genre, which was first birthed via a mod for its own game: Warcraft 3’s DoTA.

“First of all, I think the Heroes team made a great game,” Morhaime said. “One of my regrets is that we didn’t pursue Dota early enough. Dota was very popular and we were very focused on World of Warcraft at the time – there were more people playing Dota than Warcraft 3.”