While the ongoing Esports World Cup showcases the cutting edge of competitive gaming, introducing us to new disciplines and celebrating established giants, its glittering stage casts a long shadow over those that didn`t make it. For every title ascending to esports prominence, there are others that once harbored grand ambitions, only to see their professional scenes wither, their tournaments shrink, and their prize pools vanish. This article delves into the fascinating and often poignant stories of five prominent esports disciplines that truly invested in building a competitive ecosystem but ultimately failed to sustain the dream.
Before we begin, a brief clarification: we`re not discussing games like Artifact, which had esports aspirations but never truly laid the groundwork for a competitive scene – one cannot mourn what was never truly alive. Nor are we delving into ancient history, such as the early Need for Speed series from the inaugural World Cyber Games, which belongs to a different era of digital archaeology. Our focus is on games that built a stage, invited the players, but then, perhaps abruptly, saw the curtains fall.
Paladins: The Underdog That Couldn`t Outrun Its Shadow
Paladins, often described as the “Overwatch for the more budget-conscious PC owner,” emerged as a free-to-play hero shooter just months after Blizzard`s immensely popular title. Its blueprint was familiar: team-based combat, diverse character roles, objective control, and a vibrant, cartoonish fantasy aesthetic. Key differentiators included slightly simpler graphics, a perk-based loadout system, and the glorious ability to traverse maps on mounts. Inevitably, it spent its entire competitive life in Overwatch`s formidable shadow, frequently dismissed as a mere “budget clone.”
Despite this, Paladins made a significant push for esports. Tournaments began as early as 2017, attracting major organizations like Virtus.pro, NAVI, NIP, and Team Envy. Hi-Rez, the developer, even hosted substantial LAN events, including a 2019 World Championship in Atlanta boasting a respectable $300,000 prize pool. The ecosystem appeared complete, featuring a dedicated broadcast studio, regional qualifiers, and professional teams. The glaring issue, however, was consistent: viewership. Much like Overwatch, Paladins proved notoriously difficult to spectate. An observer required the agility of a hummingbird to capture the frantic action without inducing dizziness or, worse, profound boredom in the audience. While Overwatch League leveraged a massive marketing budget and polished presentation to mitigate this challenge, Paladins simply lacked the comparable financial muscle.
Ultimately, Paladins` competitive events rarely surpassed the 100,000 peak concurrent viewer mark. In early 2021, the developers officially shut down its esports division, halting all official tournaments. By 2025, Hi-Rez announced the cessation of new content development for Paladins itself, leaving its servers operational but its future static. A valiant effort, certainly, but a stark reminder that even a solid game can struggle to establish a thriving competitive ecosystem without an engaging spectator experience and a marketing budget capable of challenging its rivals.
GWENT: A Witcher`s Card Game Dealt a Losing Hand
GWENT, the collectible card game born from the beloved “Witcher 3” universe, initially appeared poised for a success story akin to Dota 2`s evolution from a Warcraft III mod. Official tournaments commenced during its beta phase in 2017, showcasing mechanics and visuals distinct from its eventual full release. CD Projekt RED, the developer, demonstrated serious commitment to esports, hosting events in truly unique, thematically fitting locations – from grand castles to, remarkably, operational salt mines. These distinctive LAN events, often with prize pools around $100,000 (one of which notably featured The International champion Peter `ppd` Dager), were complemented by regular online leagues.
CD Projekt RED meticulously crafted a full professional season, with these idiosyncratic LANs culminating in a $250,000 World Championship. It was beautiful, imbued with character, but it largely lacked an audience. GWENT`s peak viewership rarely exceeded 50,000, a common affliction for most collectible card games: their intricate strategies often don`t translate into thrilling spectator experiences for casual viewers. Furthermore, GWENT`s official release in late 2018 brought significant mechanical overhauls and balance changes. While visually more appealing, the increased complexity and altered balance alienated a segment of its existing player base.
For several more years, CD Projekt RED maintained some professional support, but the unique LANs vanished, and prize pools noticeably shrank. The final official event, a World Championship in 2023, carried a comparatively modest prize. Following 2023, official support for the game itself ceased, effectively handing GWENT over to its community and, in doing so, sealing the fate of its competitive ambitions. A charming endeavor, undoubtedly, but charm alone cannot pay the bills or enthrall millions.
Heroes of the Storm: Blizzard`s Unprofitable Masterpiece
Heroes of the Storm (HotS), a MOBA featuring characters from across Blizzard`s iconic universes, stands as arguably the most poignant example of a dead esports discipline. Upon its launch, HotS was hailed as revolutionary, daring to redefine the MOBA genre rather than merely mimicking Dota 2 or League of Legends. It quickly found an audience, and a thriving esports scene rapidly followed. The first World Championship in 2015 saw participation from top-tier organizations like Cloud9, NAVI, MVP, Fnatic, and Dignitas.
The professional circuit was robust, featuring transitional events with prize pools ranging from $100,000 to $400,000, all culminating in annual $1 million World Championships at BlizzCon. Competitive HotS, by all external metrics, resembled an S-tier discipline: excellent production values, dedicated broadcast studios, enthusiastic live audiences, and renowned team tags. Blizzard even initiated a collegiate league in the U.S., mirroring traditional sports models. Yet, beneath this impressive facade, persistent rumors of financial underperformance began to circulate. Reasons varied: Blizzard was late to an already saturated MOBA market, struggling to compete with entrenched giants, and the company never quite settled on a sustainable monetization model.
Then, just a month after the conclusion of the 2018 World Championship, Blizzard delivered a bombshell: the immediate freezing of the competitive scene. This was not a discipline on life support; it was a functioning, active esports ecosystem. But in Blizzard`s corporate assessment, it simply wasn`t profitable enough. And just like that, the history of competitive HotS concluded. While subsequent community-funded events kept a flicker of the scene alive, they were mere echoes. By 2022, Blizzard formally ceased new content development for HotS itself. A stark, brutal lesson: even a well-executed, beloved game with a thriving community can be deemed expendable if the numbers fail to align with corporate financial objectives.
Wild Rift: Riot`s Mobile Misfire
Wild Rift, the mobile adaptation of Riot Games` global phenomenon League of Legends, initially seemed like an unequivocal success story. The premise was undeniable: take the world`s most popular MOBA, adapt it for the world`s most popular platform among younger audiences, and entrust its development to a company with unparalleled esports experience. What, indeed, could possibly go wrong?
As it transpired, quite a lot. Riot Games arrived significantly late to the burgeoning mobile MOBA market. By Wild Rift`s release in late 2020, established competitors like Honor of Kings and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) were already celebrating their fifth anniversaries, having cultivated massive, loyal player bases and dominant competitive scenes. Consequently, capturing significant market share and building an instant competitive foundation proved exceptionally challenging.
Riot, leveraging its extensive esports expertise, launched its first Tier-1 championship a year after release, offering $500,000 and attracting familiar organizations like Team Secret and TSM. Viewership, peaking at 62,000, was underwhelming but perhaps excusable for a nascent title. The following year, however, Riot went all-in for the first full Wild Rift World Championship. They deployed every marketing tool in their arsenal: elaborate cinematics, custom music videos, impressive stage designs in Singapore, and star-studded promotional campaigns. The prize pool was boosted to an astounding $2 million. This was Riot`s grand strategy, expecting a League of Legends-esque explosion. The result was not merely disappointing; it was catastrophic. The tournament`s peak viewership was a meager 54,000 – even lower than the previous year, with interest declining further into the playoffs. For context, Honor of Kings was nearing 400,000 viewers, and MLBB was regularly pulling several million concurrent viewers.
Months later, Riot announced the cessation of competitive support for Wild Rift in all regions except Asia. While a professional scene technically persists there, it is a shadow of its intended glory, featuring fewer teams, diminished prize pools, and virtually no international coverage. Riot now experiments with entertainment-focused events for Wild Rift, featuring content creators and casual play, a clear departure from its once-grand esports ambitions. Even the titan Riot Games discovered that timing, and the immense advantage of established market dominance, can be insurmountable.
Auto Chess: The Auto-Battler`s Fleeting Reign
Do you recall the peculiar “chess boom” of 2019, ignited by Drodo Studio`s custom map, Dota Auto Chess? That unassuming mod not only significantly boosted Dota 2`s average player count but also spawned an entirely new game genre: auto-battlers. Soon came Valve`s Dota Underlords, Riot Games` Teamfight Tactics, and Drodo`s own standalone version, simply titled Auto Chess, in partnership with Dragonest.
Released just months after the mod`s meteoric rise, Auto Chess seemed perfectly positioned to capitalize on the genre`s immense, if ultimately short-lived, interest. The original Dota Auto Chess mod had amassed 7 million unique players and a peak concurrent viewership of around 300,000 in a mere couple of months. Drodo and Dragonest naturally anticipated similar success for their independent title. Early competitive events with modest prize pools preceded a bold announcement: a $1 million World Championship. At the time, only a handful of top-tier esports disciplines commanded such a significant prize.
The 32-player tournament in Shanghai, while international, received official broadcasting almost exclusively for the Chinese audience, making broader viewership metrics elusive. However, the aftermath proved telling: after the Auto Chess Invitational 2019, the developers` appetite for significant esports investment rapidly waned. Smaller events continued, but the dream of million-dollar world championships evaporated. The last known international tournament took place in 2021, and the overall hype for the auto-battler genre itself had dissipated even earlier, impacting all titles within it, not just Auto Chess. The pervasive silence on Auto Chess`s official website since 2023 speaks volumes.
A curious footnote: one former Team Liquid player, who had previously competed in Artifact (another game that famously fizzled out), made the ill-fated transition to Auto Chess. Some might call that a masterclass in professional esports misfortune.
The narratives of these five games offer a sobering, yet illuminating, perspective on the volatile world of esports. Whether the cause was market saturation, a game`s inherent lack of spectator appeal, monetization struggles, the rapid decline of a genre`s popularity, or simply a cold, calculated corporate decision to cut losses, the path to sustained esports success is fraught with peril. These fallen giants serve as a poignant reminder that in the hyper-competitive arena of gaming, even with significant investment and initial promise, only the most resilient, adaptable, and financially viable titles can truly endure and etch their names into the annals of competitive history.
Jasper Hawthorne