Heroes of the Storm is officially dead as Blizzard shifts into permanent maintenance mode

Blizzard has confirmed that its MOBA Heroes of the Storm will no longer see any major content updates, as the game shifts into permanent maintenance mode.

In short, servers will remain online and Heroes of the Storm will remain playable, but you can expect updates to become even fewer and further between than they had been in recent years.

"Moving forward we will support Heroes in a manner similar to our other longstanding games, StarCraft and StarCraft II," the devs say in the announcement. "In the future, we’ll continue seasonal rolls and hero rotations, and while the in-game shop will remain operational there are no plans for new for-purchase content to be added. Future patches will primarily focus on client sustainability and bug fixing, with balance updates coming as needed."

With a patch launching next week, all players will receive an Epic Arcane Lizard mount as "a token of our appreciation," Blizzard explains.

The end of major support for Heroes of the Storm comes as little surprise to its players. The game's last new hero, Hogger, launched back in December 2020, and while there have been several hero reworks and balance updates since then, there have been no new content additions. The game's last balance patch launched in March 2022.

Heroes of the Storm launched in June 2015, at the height of the boom for MOBA - or multiplayer online battle arena - games. While leading titles like Dota 2 and League of Legends have remained popular, Heroes of the Storm never became a true breakout, despite maintaining a dedicated community of fans.

Blizzard says it's "committed" to making BlizzCon 2023 happen, so that may be the biggest venue for the company to reveal whatever it's working on next.