[Update]: After 12 years of frantic battles, Heroes of Newerth has now shut down.

Before Dota 2 and League of Legends were even released, 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, one of which was switching from free-to-play to a standard paid model, Heroes of Newerth rather quickly lost a good chunk of its playerbase and never really managed to recover.

As such, I'm saddened to announce that this decline has now met its inevitable end. According to the newest developer update, Heroes of Newerth will be closing down its doors on June 20, 2022, while new account creation will be halted on December 31, 2021.

"Heroes of Newerth (HoN) has been in service for a long time," reads the brief 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."

In order to give Heroes of Newerth one last hurrah, as well as hopefully populate the servers like in the old days, the developers will be running an assortment of in-game events from December 20, 2021 to February 19, 2022. So if you're in the mood for some nostalgia, or simply want to see what Heroes of Newerth is about before it fades away, that would be the ideal period to do so.

Even though I haven't played Heroes of Newerth in many years, I must admit I'm quite sad to see it go. Some of the hero designs like Puppet Master, Nomad or even Empath were an absolute blast to play with, even if their balance did leave much to be desired.

I think what hurts the most is the knowledge that, with a couple of tweaks and a better business model, Heroes of Newerth could've comfortably stood shoulder to shoulder with both Dota 2 and League of Legends. But alas, that didn't happen, and so a once immensly popular game is now doomed to simply fade away.

You can learn a little bit more about Heroes of Newerth and its final days over at the Facebook announcement. And just for old time's sake, I'll leave you with the incredibly dated original trailer. Enjoy!