A very sad day for Heroes of the Storm and us here at Method as well, as we're saying goodbye to @adrdhots, @AtheroHotS, @CursenBoi, @NicHeroes, @BadBennyhots and @Elahzul_ following the cancellation of the Heroes of the Storm Global Championships (HGC).
Like so many of you in the community, we were shocked and saddened at the announcement by Blizzard Entertainment that HGC and Heroes of the Dorm were being canceled in 2019, and even more - the development team was being scaled down to what can only be assumed to be "just enough" to keep the game running.
Method was immensely proud to hold a spot in the HGC. Our players were instantly embraced by the rest of our teams and our community; we have nothing but respect and admiration for the players, content creators, and fans of Heroes.
We are troubled by the way the announcement was made; namely the impolitic choice to use social media to share such a message that effectively ended the careers of hundreds of players, content creators, casters, production crews overnight - and broke the hearts of countless fans.
We can confirm with heavy hearts we have disbanded Method HOTS, and issued termination agreements to our team members. We will do our best to support them during their transition into the next phase of their professional journeys.
- Darrie, General Manager
Here's the post by Blizzard President J. Allen Brack sharing the bad news for both the game itself and its esports component:
We’re constantly changing and evolving not only our games, but how we support and grow them. This evolution is vital to our ability to continue doing what we love to do—making great games—and it’s what makes Blizzard, Blizzard.
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.
Despite the change, Heroes of the Storm remains our love letter to Blizzard’s worlds and characters. We’ll continue actively supporting the game with new heroes, themed events, and other content that our community loves, though the cadence will change. Ultimately, we’re setting up the game for long-term sustainability. We’re so grateful for the support the community has shown from the beginning, and the development team will continue to support Heroes with the same passion, dedication, and creativity that has made the game such a unique experience.
We’ve also evaluated our plans around Heroes esports—after looking at all of our priorities and options in light of the change with the game, the Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm will not return in 2019. This was another very difficult decision for us to make. The love that the community has for these programs is deeply felt by everyone who works on them, but we ultimately feel this is the right decision versus moving forward in a way that would not meet the standards that players and fans have come to expect.
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. We appreciate all of our hard-working developers and everyone in the Blizzard community, and look forward to sharing many more epic gaming experiences with you in the future.
- J. Allen Brack and Ray Gresko
And so we once again wish our entire HotS team good luck in their future endeavours and hope the game itself bounces back and has an esports comeback.
