Why would HGC be canceled when league just got banned in china

General Discussion
1

With league of legends being banned in china, don’t see why blizzard would cancel HGC when they can now literally fill a void in the Chinese market where there only competition is Dota 2.

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2

I don’t think that’s actually official yet. and wasn’t LOL on the list of games that just needed to change some things? pretty sure most of the ones that were on the ban list were battle royal games like fortnite and pubg.

3

why lol is banned ?

damn 20 characters

4

League on list for toxic chat rooms and oversexualized images of women.

If HoTS just turns off that for Chinese players and not oversexualize it’s female characters it will be fine.

Thing is though, overwatch is banned for promoting the gays … tracer that specific character is in heroes of the storm…

5

yea but thankfully hots is too small to be on their radar to even make that list and by the time the backlash comes in they will stop with this nonsense anyways

6

It is official. HGC and HotD are cancelled for 2019 (and further?).
Just check the most recent Blizzard news right now.
~Stupid forums doesn’t allow me to put a link.

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7

"Blizzard EntertainmentDecember 13, 2018

We’re constantly changing and evolving not only our games, but how we support and grow them. This evolution is vital to our ability to continue doing what we love to do—making great games—and it’s what makes Blizzard, Blizzard.

Over the past several years, the work of evaluating our development processes and making hard decisions has led to new games and other products that we’re proud of. We now have more live games and unannounced projects than at any point in the company’s history. We’re also at a point where we need to take some of our talented developers and bring their skills to other projects. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams, and we’re excited to see the passion, knowledge, and experience that they’ll bring to those projects. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to make tough choices like this. Games like Diablo II, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Overwatch, and more would not exist had we not made similar decisions in the past.

Despite the change, Heroes of the Storm remains our love letter to Blizzard’s worlds and characters. We’ll continue actively supporting the game with new heroes, themed events, and other content that our community loves, though the cadence will change. Ultimately, we’re setting up the game for long-term sustainability. We’re so grateful for the support the community has shown from the beginning, and the development team will continue to support Heroes with the same passion, dedication, and creativity that has made the game such a unique experience.

We’ve also evaluated our plans around Heroes esports—after looking at all of our priorities and options in light of the change with the game, the Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm will not return in 2019. This was another very difficult decision for us to make. The love that the community has for these programs is deeply felt by everyone who works on them, but we ultimately feel this is the right decision versus moving forward in a way that would not meet the standards that players and fans have come to expect.

While we don’t make these decisions lightly, we do look to the future excited about what the decisions will mean for our other live games and all the projects we have in the works. We appreciate all of our hard-working developers and everyone in the Blizzard community, and look forward to sharing many more epic gaming experiences with you in the future.

J. Allen Brack and Ray Gresko"

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8

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/22833558/heroes-of-the-storm-news

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9

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Diablo 2 existed inspite of blizz all they did was eat up the company that was making diablo call them blizz north and then harass the living hell out of them for years until they folded it…

10

Let me be clear.
This overall,
isn’t looking great for the future of the game.
At all.

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11

khroen literally just uninstalled the game live on the internets :grimacing::grimacing::grimacing:

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12

Well after the Diablo Immortal fiasco the certainly know how to follow it up!

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13

i think most of us suspected it was coming. the ones that have been around a bit longer at least would have. like they said though they will keep supporting the game. just like they support D2 for this long. it does however mean that the game is that much closer to being on life support at this point now that they are making the bigger cut backs.

its like i have always said though since they first started down the path of esports. it is something that is only going to chew up money they could have put into the game. i would be willing to bet they figured that out. esports didnt pan out like they hoped it would because this game is not LoL and doesnt have the same following.

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14

All Blizzard games fall into the same category…“inharmonious chat.” By that, of course, they mean that it’s uncensored. You can’t have uncensored chat in a communist country.

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15

Uhm, yeaaaaaa, I don’t think anyone cares

16

Yeah well the issue with the e-sports that they did with HotS and subsequently Overwatch, and both are showing the same issues, is that it is very expensive to artificially create an e-sport scene against one that was organic, e.g. Dota, LoL, Dota, SC2, W3, etc. It is expensive to the point that it is actually very difficult to maintain so it essentially became their white elephant figuratively speaking as they are spending a lot but they aren’t reaching huge margins on either ventures. It gets their names out but it isn’t sustainable.

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17

HGC getting canned may be due to blizz getting ousted from China too.

While some of the games I saw were on the ‘corrections’ list, and not outright banned (yet?) its not a secret blizz has been bending over backwards to keep in the chinese market with their games (holidays, censorship, removal of ‘western icons’, etc). If all of their titles are suddenly, at risk of, if not going to be, cut off from not only their current staples, but any future projects they have in progress for the region, then that’s a HUGE setback for Blizzard.

I’m not sure on games playerbase/profits there, but the WoW movie may be a decent indicator: of the $433 million gross, 90% of that was overseas, with 49% being from China.

US stock value is one thing, but getting slammed in other regions may be more than acti/blizzard can deal with and any costs that can go, for at least the foreseeable future, may shift what blizz does for their games. They may have to double-down on keeping in China (more likely imo) or just outright scuttle things in favor of stabilizing what they have now.

at least, I figure this unexpected call on this announcement considering the other promises blizz made before seems oddly timed given how close its been to the reveal of the chinese banned games announcement.

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18

Rich did too on stream :frowning:

A lot of them are jumping over to LoL and Dota by the look of things.

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