In an announcement on their website, Blizzard revealed that development on Heroes Of The Storm will start to scale back. Because of this, Heroes esports has been canceled for 2019. That means that the Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm tournaments will not return for 2019.
The reasoning for the shift in the development team comes from the growing library of games and unannounced projects that the company has. They have more live games and unannounced projects than at any point in their history. “As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes Of The Storm and bring their skills to other projects.” Blizzard also made a point saying that a decision like this wouldn’t have brought games such as Diablo II, World Of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Overwatch and more into existence.
The company does still want to support the game. However, they said that the timing of updates will change. “We’ll continue actively supporting the game with new heroes, themed events, and other content that our community loves, though the cadence will change.” The company says that the game is being set up for long-term sustainability despite this news. These are the main reasons why the Esports scene for the game will not return in 2019. “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.” Blizzard is aware that the community for both of these programs runs deep but they believe that this is the right decision for the situation.
The fans of the series and the events have made their opinions of the news known. In a Polygon article, there are several content creators and professional gamers who have shared their take on the news that the game will not be coming back for next year.