While MOBA games such as League of Legends aren't nearly as ubiquitous as they once were, when new ones were released at a remarkably rapid pace, some of them have stuck around for way longer than most players may have expected. Specifically, LOL's old rival, Heroes of Newerth, stayed on the market for just over a decade.

Now, however, Heroes of Newerth has officially closed down, with League of Legends and DOTA 2 being some of the few remaining original MOBAs that are still available today. Though the developers of HON announced late last year that the game would shut down on June 20, 2022, there was no official reasoning provided as to why that would be the case.

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While Heroes of Newerth may have been somewhat competitive with the likes of DOTA 2 and League of Legends in 2015, that seems to have changed quite a while ago. Even the game's official shutdown announcement on its subreddit received just over a few dozen upvotes and comments, suggesting that the present playerbase simply wasn't enough to support such a massive project. At this time, the servers seem to be fully inaccessible, and there's no offline functionality of any kind present in the game, effectively killing it in its tracks.

It's curious to note that Heroes of Newerth was originally a paid game. At $30 per copy, the developer quickly realized that it needed to pivot towards a F2P model with microtransactions instead. This allowed the studio to secure a more substantial community that could rally around an underdog MOBA which otherwise wouldn't be able to keep up with the genre's biggest, most comprehensive offerings.

Of course, Heroes of Newerth did stick around for way longer than many other MOBAs. Epic Games' Paragon was scuttled rather early on, for example, though the main issue there was the nascent success of none other than Fortnite, which took up resources from just about every other Epic Games production. Whatever the case may be, HON managed to stay relatively relevant for an impressively long stretch of time, especially for a F2P title.

In the meantime, one of HON's old rivals seems to be doing better than ever before. League of Legends' Xbox Game Pass release has not only bolstered its already substantial momentum but also marked a sort of resurgence for the IP's main offering. LOL grew into a massive franchise over the years, and some of its most prominent media offerings, such as Arcane, outshone the base game for a little while. Now, however, with LOL available via Game Pass, more players can jump into the fray than ever before.

Heroes of Newerth was available exclusively on PC, with the servers shutting down on June 20, 2022.

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