By no means all esports disciplines have a long and prosperous life – some of them wither soon, or even do not start soaring though it is expected from them. Stories of several similar games are very interesting – and we are going to tell you about them.
World Of Tanks
The most popular game out of those made in the CIS countries seemed to be a perfect candidate to the role of one of the leading esports disciplines. The developers did a lot for this, they were trying to push WoT forward into esports holding competitions. At first they seemed to be doing fine. But the impulse faded away, so no one has been able to remember about WoT in esports for 5 years. The game turned out to be a misfit for esports – first of all, it lacks pageantry. Luckily, it is still pretty successful beyond esports.
Quake Champions and Unreal Tournament 2003/2004
The Quake series is very important for esports, especially its third part, so when many years later this discipline was to re-emerge, many esports fans treated the news with enthusiasm. Alas, it did not last long: even though the game was similar to the legendary Quake 3, it was full of bugs, they were minor but annoying. However, it does not matter since deathmatch games are left in the past. The developer was trying to keep QC as an esports discipline but later it was clear – the audience was way too little to justify further investments.
Before that a similar story had happened to the Unreal Tournament. Epic was going to make releases of new parts annual, the same as sports simulators, which appeared in the name, but it did not work for long – two parts were released – UT 2003 and 2004. If 2003 attracted a lot of criticism, 2004 is a great game, but it was too late, so it was not popular enough to become an esports discipline.
Artifact
Valve’s attempt to catch a train of popularity of card games ended up with a massive failure. It went from tens of thousands users at the start to hundreds, without thousands, in a year. Tournaments collected a humble audience and later the amount of people dropped. Valve even announced a plan to remake the game but then they understood that it was not going to help and let the game go freely. Artifact damaged Valve’s reputation, and Dota 2 keeps losing its popularity – the prize pool of The International 2022 appears to be lower than last year.
Heroes of the Storm
Another attempt to fit into a popular genre, but MOBA this time and from Blizzard. Not such a failure as Artifact – HotS found its audience even if it was smaller than League of Legends’ and Dota 2’s. So, it was totally unexpected when several years ago Blizzard announced that they were ending HotS’ support as an esports discipline. The game itself lives but it doesn’t exist in esports anymore.
Takeaway
Failed esports disciplines are more numerous and most of them are good. Currently popular disciplines are going to shrink to a nullity and meanwhile, you can follow the news on https://egw.news