The “plug” that has been taken out is the one of e-sport, a field in which has never been good but Activision always tried to force because of its greed.
HotS has come to the moba market far too late (the gerne requires massive time in terms of learning and who wants to switch from established DotA2 or LoL, unless they’re in love with Blizzard’s famous heroes) and have tried to twist the gameplay with new mechanics that not everyone like (different maps, objectives and so on).
On top of that they’ve made some terrible mistake that still here nowdays (MMS is terrible, so the report system).
It was clear that it would have survived more as niche title, the 3rd of the maket anyway, but Activision couldn’t understand that and had continued to push on HGC making the situation even worse.
Finally, with the current situation about all major SH dropping hard and losing money, they’ve “discovered” that they can still run the game without bruning money on a world championship that will never even repay itself. The cut had unfortunatly hit also the develompment department of HotS but I will probablg like a slower pace but with more “intelligent” content that faster releases of poor quality.