Blizzard shocked fans when they announced they were shutting down the Heroes Global Championship at the end of 2018. But now the esports community is stepping up to keep the scene alive. All we now need is the fans to show up and make it a viable long term effort.
Blizzard has always erred on the side of highly polished, so there’s some argument that running the HGC exactly the way they thought it should be run could have been more expensive than it needed to be.
Forcing a league to operate under weekly league conditions isn’t cheap, and even the likes of CS:GO and DOTA aren’t running weekly leagues at the highest level. They run regular tournaments, which feed into a points system over the year and help rank teams as lead in opportunities to the biggest prize pool tournaments of the annual season.
Two of the organisations that had committed to Heroes of the Storm esports have stepped in to try to kickstart the next era. Tempo Storm and HeroesHearth will run the “Toasty & Gladman Heroes Invitational” on February 9-10 and we can’t wait to see how things turn out.
Teams? Check. Date? Check. Now we just need to find out if fans will prove whether HotS is viable as an esport in any way for the long haul. I’m hoping we get a slow and steady roll out over the next couple of years to give the new era time to find its feet.
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Seamus runs Byteside. You may also have spotted his words at the Australian Financial Review, the ABC, Junkee, Gamespot, The Esports Observer, CNET, Gizmodo and a few other spots over the years. He's very happy that he gets to nerd out for a living.