Five games which flopped as esports titles

With every video game genre, there are a lot of games that try to make it to the big stage of esports. However, the competition is always rough. There are a lot of games that fail as an esports title.

A few reasons might be a lack of maintenance and content, innovation, no communication with the community, the studio being overly ambitious or simply greed. The most important thing for an esports title is community feedback and proper balance changes.

Here are five games that failed to make it big despite having some great ideas and interesting gameplay:

5. Realm Royale

During the peak popularity of the Battle Royale genre, Realm Royale came as a competitor to games like Fortnite and PUBG. It featured some extra game modes and an art design similar to World of Warcraft. Overall, the game had a decent launch with fairly positive feedback. However, the game had a growing cheating problem which went on without being addressed.

Paired with dry updates, the game started losing players. Eventually, the game stopped because of an update after 2020 which was the end for the game. There was a Reinforced update in 2022, but most players had already moved on. Servers for Realm Royale are still up, so people can still experience the game. Although, they might encounter bots and cheaters.

4. Halo Infinite

Players had a lot of expectations from the latest Halo instalment, but the game came as an overall disappointment for most gamers. The campaign was delayed to ship the multiplayer early as a free-to-play option. Sadly, the multiplayer was also not ready to be shipped early.

The lack of forge or other popular modes and maps was a huge setback for its online community. Gameplay was the only thing holding the community together for a while more promised features were cancelled and the in-game store was prioritized, player base started declining.

Since its release, the game has added new things and is likely in the best shape. However, getting the disappointed players back is close to impossible.

3. Spellbreak

One of the unique takes on the Battle Royale genre, Spellbreak added magic combat with elements mixing to its game. The game was fun and stood out among others. Most players believed it had the potential to rival some of the biggest esports titles like PUBG and Fortnite.

However, the updates were slow and lacked content. Another issue that players resented was Epic Games’ exclusivity, which affected the majority of its player base. On August 19, 2022, the developers revealed that the development would halt, and the servers would shut down in early 2023. The studio was acquired by Blizzard to work on World of Warcraft.

2. Paladins

Paladins came as a free-to-play competitor to Overwatch by Hi-Rez studio in 2018 and for a while, it had a good active esports community. There were tournaments, although not as large scale as Overwatch League, it was a start for the game much smaller in scale.

The game, however, couldn’t keep up. Bugs, disconnection, and crashing were just a few issues that the developers were very slow to address. Furthermore, the open beta 64 introduced a pay-to-win system, considered one of the biggest causes of the drop in active players. After 2020, there were no more tournaments, the game has declined since.

1. Heroes of the Storm

Watching the success of Dota and League of Legends, after shutting down Defense of the Ancients, Blizzard also jumped on the MOBA scene with Heroes of the Storm. The esports events started the same year as the releases, with HotS Global Championship starting in 2016.

The game was consistent till 2018, after which Blizzard announced that they could not compete with rivals on a similar scale. There are still players keeping the game alive but as of now, the esports scene for the game is bleak.