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Blizzard cancels Heroes of the Storm Global Championship

Devs to be reassigned elsewhere, but game will continue to receive live support

Blizzard has announced it will end its esports endeavours around Heroes of the Storm.

The Heroes Global Championship, and collegiate league and Heroes of the Dorm, will not return in 2019.

Blizzard is also moving developers off the game to work on unannounced projects and other live games.

Full development support for Heroes of the Storm will continue though, with new heroes, events and content.

In a statement from president J. Allen Brack and vice president Ray Gresko, Blizzard said it was a "setting up the game for long-term sustainability", and described it as a "difficult decision".

The decision may not comes as a surprise to many however, as Heroes of the Storm Global Championship actually saw a decline in viewership last year from 2017.

According to analytics group Esports Charts, overall viewers fell to three million from 3.5 million, while peak concurrent viewers fell to 183,000 down from 191,000.

"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," said Brack and Gresko.

"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."

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Ivy Taylor: Ivy joined GamesIndustry.biz in 2017 having previously worked as a regional journalist, and a political campaigns manager before that. They are also one of the UK's foremost Sonic the Hedgehog apologists.
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