Before Dota 2 and League of Legends held absolute dominion over the genre, Heroes of Newerth enjoyed immense popularity among the MOBA crowd thanks to its highly polished gameplay and remarkably creative hero designs. Unfortunately due to a couple of major missteps, the biggest of which was switching from free-to-play to a standard paid model, Heroes of Newerth quickly lost a good chunk of its playerbase and never really managed to spring back.

I'd love to tell you this story has a happy ending, but alas Heroes of Newerth is not so lucky. As such, after twelve years of frantic battles, I'm saddened to announce that Heroes of Newerth has now closed down its doors for good.

"Heroes of Newerth (HoN) has been in service for a long time," reads the brief developer update. "We would like to extend our sincere thanks to everyone who has been on this journey, created special memories together with us, moved HoN forward, and created a lot of unforgettable stories for HoN, as well as making Heroes of Newerth become one of the most popular MOBA games in history."

"Last but not least, even though the journey of HoN or Heroes of Newerth has come to an end, we believe that all the valuable memories of our players through all these years will never fade away."

While this is a bit of a pipe dream, there is still a chance for some of Heroes of Newerth's more unique characters to be reborn through Dota 2. A while ago dataminers found references to Puppet Master in Dota 2's database, and even though nothing has come of it so far, there is at least a minuscule chance Valve might give some of those fan-favorite heroes a second lease at life. Whether that will actually happen, only time will tell.

Should anything big get announced, I'll make sure to let you know. Until then, I'll leave you with the very first Heroes of Newerth trailer, just for old time's sake. Enjoy!