Blizzard Moving Developers Away From Heroes of the Storm, Will Stop Supporting eSports

Blizzard Entertainment announced today that they're moving some developers away from the Heroes of the Storm development team and will not be running the Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm in 2019. While this isn't the end for Heroes of the Storm, it does mark the beginning of the end, as it clearly indicates that Blizzard is no longer focusing on the title.

Over the past several years, the work of evaluating our development processes and making hard decisions has led to new games and other products that we’re proud of. We now have more live games and unannounced projects than at any point in the company’s history. We’re also at a point where we need to take some of our talented developers and bring their skills to other projects. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams, and we’re excited to see the passion, knowledge, and experience that they’ll bring to those projects. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to make tough choices like this. Games like Diablo II, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Overwatch, and more would not exist had we not made similar decisions in the past.

While Heroes of the Storm has gained market share in the MOBA market, it wasn't gaining traction as fast as Blizzard had hoped. It also looks like MOBAs have lost a lot of mind share to up and coming genres like Battle Royale games.

With League of Legends and Dota 2 also in decline, time will tell if the MOBA genre is done for or if this is simply a pause in its growth.

Further reading: Official post, Reddit Discussion Thread