One of LoL’s biggest competitors will be discontinued after 12 years

On December 14, 2021By Garmin Philip

League of Legends was released in 2009 and caused a MOBA hype. A few more games followed, including Heroes of Newerth in 2010. However, this is exactly what the developers have announced in the coming year.

When will HoN be discontinued? Heroes of Newerth is slated to run until June 20, 2022. But then it’s over and the servers are shut down.

The discontinuation does not come as a complete surprise, as the developers announced in 2019 that Update 4.7.3 will be the last major content patch. After that, only balance changes and bug fixes should follow.

The developers thanked the players via Facebook for supporting them for 12 years.

Heroes of Newerth was based on DOTA and was released as a full-price title

What kind of game is that anyway? Heroes of Newerth was officially released in May 2010, a few months after League of Legends. The gameplay of both games is very similar:

In both games, two teams of five players each fight against each other.
You slip into the role of a champion and the goal is to destroy the opposing base.
There are also three lanes in both games with minions running and towers.

However, Heroes of Newerth is more based on the Mod DOTA. The game is darker and not as beginner-friendly as LoL. It also uses the “Deny” technique. So you can consciously kill your own minions and towers so that the opponent does not get the gold and experience points.

Another big difference was the payment model. While LoL appeared as a Free2Play title, Heroes of Newerth initially required players to buy a full-price title. In return, however, they had unlocked all champions directly.

You can see that in the initial number of players. LoL exploded right from the start, while HoN remained stable for many years, but never ventured into the big spheres:

Balance problems and the release of DOTA harmed HoN

Why did HoN fail? When it was released, Heroes of Newerth was well received. Although it had fewer players due to the price hurdle, it was received positively by DOTA fans and players who would have liked more depth in LoL. This is why some called HoN the best DOTA clone on the market.

In 2011 the game switched to a Free2Play model and experienced a “small boom”, as you can see in the graphic above.

However, champions who were far too strong are said to have been released around the same time. However, these champions then had to be purchased separately, even for the players who had previously paid full price for Heroes of Newerth. That didn’t go down well.

Interest in the MOBA decreased from around 2014. There were two reasons for this:

For one thing, Valve’s DOTA 2 was becoming increasingly popular. Especially the DOTA fans, who had previously played Heroes of Newerth, switched from the “clone” to the “original”.
In 2015 there was a change in the developer studio and a new publisher took over. After that, the regular updates should definitely not have failed.

In 2022, HoN should finally be over.

Does HoN still have players today? Yes, matches still start relatively quickly. There is also a YouTube channel that summarizes the “Top Plays of the Week” and receives over 20,000 views of the videos every week. Apart from this channel you can find some videos on YouTube about the MOBA.

If you want to watch some gameplay on HoN, you can do so in the video from YouTuber Gorgc. He tried Heroes of Newerth for the first time in June 2021: