The competitive gaming landscape is a vibrant, ever-evolving ecosystem where new stars rise, and established titles fiercely contest the spotlight. The ongoing Esports World Cup, for instance, showcases a diverse array of disciplines, some of which might surprise even seasoned enthusiasts. Yet, for every emerging contender, there exists a graveyard of once-promising titles that, despite significant investment and fervent hopes, ultimately failed to carve out a lasting legacy. This article delves into five such games, exploring the unique challenges and critical missteps that led to their demise in the brutal arena of professional esports.
Paladins: The Shadow of a Giant
Released shortly after Blizzard`s behemoth, Overwatch, Hi-Rez Studios` Paladins was often perceived as its budget-friendly counterpart. Both were team-based shooters featuring diverse character rosters, objective-based gameplay, and ultimate abilities. Paladins distinguished itself with simpler graphics, a perk-based loadout system, and, notably, mountable horses.
Despite being perpetually in Overwatch`s shadow, Paladins made a concerted effort to establish a professional scene. Tournaments began as early as 2017, attracting major organizations like Virtus.pro, NAVI, NIP, and Team Envy. Hi-Rez even hosted large LAN events, including a 2019 World Championship in Atlanta with a respectable $300,000 prize pool. The ecosystem appeared complete: dedicated broadcast studios, regional qualifiers, and professional teams.
The Achilles` heel, however, proved to be viewership. Like Overwatch, Paladins was notoriously difficult to spectate. An observer needed to be a veritable maestro to capture all crucial moments without inducing motion sickness or boredom in the audience. While Overwatch mitigated this with massive marketing budgets and the polished facade of the Overwatch League, Paladins lacked comparable resources. Peak viewership rarely surpassed 100,000. In early 2021, Hi-Rez announced the closure of its esports operations, ceasing official events. By 2025, support for Paladins itself will conclude, leaving only the servers active but without new content.
GWENT: A Witcher Tale Without a Happy Esports Ending
Born from the popular mini-game within The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, GWENT seemed poised for a standalone esports success story, much like Dota 2 emerged from Warcraft III. CD Projekt RED, the celebrated developer, appeared genuinely committed to the competitive scene. Official tournaments commenced during its beta phase in 2017, showcasing mechanics significantly different from its eventual official release.
CD Projekt RED`s dedication was evident in its unique event locations, designed to immerse participants and viewers in the game`s fantasy setting. Championships were held in majestic castles and even deep within atmospheric salt mines. These distinctive LAN events, often boasting $100,000 prize pools, complemented regular online leagues. The developer crafted a full professional season culminating in a $250,000 World Championship, even attracting esports legends like Peter “ppd” Dager.
Yet, despite the aesthetic appeal and developer passion, GWENT`s esports scene struggled to capture a broad audience. Its peak viewership barely reached 50,000—a common affliction for card battle games, which often lack the raw visual spectacle of action titles. Furthermore, GWENT`s official release in late 2018 brought significant mechanical overhauls. While visually improved, the added complexity and balance changes alienated a segment of its existing player base. CD Projekt RED continued supporting the scene for a few more years, but the unique LANs vanished, and prize pools dwindled. The final official event, a World Championship in 2023, offered a notably modest prize. Post-2023, CD Projekt RED handed GWENT`s fate entirely to its player base, effectively ending official support for both the game and its competitive aspirations.
Heroes of the Storm: A Blizzard Bet That Didn`t Pay Off
Perhaps the most well-known casualty on this list, Heroes of the Storm (HotS) was Blizzard`s ambitious foray into the MOBA genre, featuring characters from across its beloved universes. It aimed not merely to replicate the success of Dota 2 and League of Legends but to revolutionize the genre with simplified mechanics, shared experience, and unique map objectives.
Initially, HotS found its audience, fostering a vibrant esports scene. The first HotS World Championship took place in 2015, attracting top-tier organizations like Cloud9, NAVI, Fnatic, and Dignitas. The professional season was robust, featuring transitional events with prize pools ranging from $100,000 to $400,000, culminating in a million-dollar World Championship at BlizzCon. HotS esports appeared to be an S-tier discipline: excellent production, enthusiastic fans, and reputable teams. Blizzard even established a collegiate league, mirroring traditional sports in the USA.
However, whispers of HotS`s financial underperformance began to circulate. Blizzard had entered the MOBA market late, struggling to compete with the established giants, and wrestled with its monetization strategy. A mere month after the conclusion of the 2018 World Championship, Blizzard delivered a bombshell announcement: the immediate freezing of the esports scene. HotS esports, though not commercially thriving, was a functioning competitive ecosystem. Yet, in Blizzard`s calculus, it was simply not profitable enough. This abrupt decision effectively ended professional HotS. While community-funded events have since offered a faint echo of its past glory, Blizzard ultimately ceased all development support for HotS in 2022.
Wild Rift: Too Late to the Mobile MOBA Party
When Riot Games, creators of the world`s most popular MOBA, League of Legends, announced a mobile adaptation, Wild Rift, it seemed like a guaranteed success. Porting a titan to the most accessible platform, backed by Riot`s unparalleled esports expertise—what could possibly go wrong?
A great deal, as it turned out. Riot Games entered the mobile MOBA market significantly behind the curve. By Wild Rift`s late 2020 release, established competitors like Honor of Kings and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) were already celebrating their fifth anniversaries, commanding massive audiences. Capturing a substantial market share and building an esports base from scratch in such a saturated environment proved incredibly challenging.
Riot, leveraging its extensive experience, launched a Tier-1 championship a year after Wild Rift`s release, offering a $500,000 prize pool and attracting notable organizations like Team Secret and TSM. However, event metrics were underwhelming, peaking at just 62,000 viewers. Attributing this to the game`s youth, Riot redoubled its efforts for the first full Wild Rift World Championship. They deployed their full marketing arsenal: cinematics, music videos, elaborate stage designs in Singapore, and celebrity promotions. The prize pool was boosted to a hefty $2 million. The expectation was a repeat of LoL`s meteoric success.
The result, however, was not merely unsuccessful but catastrophically so. The peak viewership for the World Championship reached a paltry 54,000, a figure that surprisingly *decreased* towards the playoffs. For context, Honor of Kings boasted nearly 400,000 viewers, while MLBB consistently surpassed several million. Within months of this spectacular failure, Riot announced a halt to Wild Rift esports support in all regions except Asia. While a professional scene technically persists in Asia, it`s a shadow of its former ambition, with small participant pools and significantly reduced prize money, largely unobserved outside of China and Southeast Asia. Riot is now experimenting with entertainment-focused events featuring content creators, a far cry from the robust professional esports scene once envisioned.
Auto Chess: The Rise and Fall of a Genre
The “chess boom” of 2019, ignited by Drodo Studio`s custom Dota Auto Chess map, was a genuine phenomenon. This mod not only boosted Dota 2`s average concurrent players by 25% but also spawned an entirely new genre: auto battlers. Valve released Dota Underlords, Riot Games launched Teamfight Tactics, and Drodo, with Dragonest`s backing, released their standalone version, simply titled Auto Chess.
With its standalone release just months after the custom map`s success, Auto Chess seemed poised to ride the genre`s immense hype. The original mod had amassed 7 million players and a 300,000 average concurrent online count. Drodo and Dragonest naturally believed their dedicated title would replicate this success. Initial esports events with smaller prize pools ($5,000-$10,000) had already occurred for the custom map. To make a statement, the creators of Auto Chess announced a World Championship with a staggering $1 million prize pool—a sum reserved for only a handful of top-tier disciplines at the time. The 32-player tournament in Shanghai, though international, received official coverage primarily for its Chinese audience, making viewership figures difficult to ascertain.
However, the aftermath of the Auto Chess Invitational 2019 was telling: the creators` enthusiasm for large-scale esports investment waned significantly. While smaller Auto Chess events persisted, grand championships and million-dollar prize pools became a thing of the past. The last notable international tournament for the game occurred in 2021. The general hype around the auto battler genre itself had dissipated even earlier, affecting all titles, not just Auto Chess. The game`s official website hasn`t seen a news update since 2023, underscoring its quiet decline.
Amusingly, one former Team Liquid player, fresh from the ill-fated Artifact, even transitioned to Auto Chess for a time. Some might call that a double dose of misfortune.
The Unforgiving Nature of Professional Gaming
The stories of Paladins, GWENT, Heroes of the Storm, Wild Rift, and Auto Chess serve as poignant reminders of the brutal realities in the esports industry. Even games with passionate developers, innovative gameplay, or the backing of industry giants can fail to sustain a long-term competitive scene. Common threads emerge: the crushing weight of competition from established titans, the elusive challenge of creating a compelling spectator experience, the developer`s often-cold calculation of financial viability, and the perils of entering a saturated market or riding a fleeting hype cycle.
While the Esports World Cup highlights the exhilarating growth and expansion of competitive gaming, this graveyard of ambition reminds us that success is never guaranteed. The path to becoming an enduring esports giant is paved not just with innovation and investment, but also with strategic timing, sustained player interest, and crucially, an audience that finds the spectacle as captivating to watch as it is to play. The esports ecosystem, for all its dazzling displays, remains an unforgiving arena where only the most resilient and adaptable titles manage to survive and thrive.
