Games such as Dota and League of Legends have been incredibly successful and have managed to draw a massive playerbase. This success inspired many game developing studio to go for what seemed like a tried and tested method of creating successful MOBAs in an attempt to boost their profits.
However, for every MOBA which broke sales records there are at least a dozen others which didn’t make the cut. There is nothing sinister in this as it is a natural selection process in which only the best MOBAs become popular.
Something similar happens with other online games. For example, casino games at NoviCasino go through a rigorous selection process in which only the best make the final cut. With MOBAs it is up to the players to decide which games will get the nod and which will become forgotten.
Infinite Crisis
The 2015 MOBA which was based on the DC Comics fictional universe in which popular super heroes face their alter egos from other universes felt like it could work. It was developed by Turbine and had Warner Bros publishing the game.
However, the game wasn’t designed as an original idea and it followed the tried and tested recipe which was already implemented in lots of popular MOBAs. At the end of the day players realised that in the search for profit Turbine and Warner Bros didn’t create anything new and as a result the game didn’t even make it until the end of the year. It was shut down in August, only five months after it was released on Steam.
Paragon
Paragon was developed by none other, but Epic Games, the studio behind the immensely successful Fortnite. However, unlike its more successful brother, Paragon didn’t become the best-selling title that the people at Epic Games were hoping it would.
Free to play access started in February 2017 and by the end of April 2018 the game’s servers were shut down. The lack of success the game had was largely down to the fact that Epic Games decided to focus more of their attention towards Fortnite, but also because the game’s playerbase was much smaller than they were originally hoping for.
Gigantic
Gigantic had a great promise, but ultimately failed to make the final cut. The game was originally designed with thoughts of combining a MOBA and a team shooter video game. It was developed by Motiga and it was released in July 2017.
However, the market proved to be too competitive for Motiga’s liking and it turned out that what they thought was an original idea had to be much more original to gain access to a larger playerbase. The official statement was that the market was too crowded and that seems like a fair assessment.
Lord of Vermilion Arena
Lord of Vermilion Arena was developed by Square Enix. It tried to combine a MOBA style game with a card game and at first it seemed like the studio could pull it off. However, it didn’t really work as planned and the game was shut down in June 2016 because it couldn’t reach Western audiences. This was yet another unsuccessful Square Enix product, following in the footsteps of Gunslinger Stratos: Reloaded.
I think MOBAs have quite a lot of similar characteristics to MMORPGs, which could probably explain why certain MOBAs just don’t make the cut, and I think the main reason is there are simply more people aggregated towards popular games. Like how there are huge fanbases for MMORPGs like WoW, RuneScape, Guild Wars II, there are huge fanbases for MOBAs like League of Legends, Smite, and DOTA 2.
Second factor is probably the trend of popular genres; when a game or genre is highly successful, there tends to be more games being developed of that genre, so there tends to be competition and a lot of games just don’t make it. And then decline tends to occur when a new genre takes the spot. It used to be MMORPGs that dominated online gaming till MOBA took the spot, and now Battle Royale is the trending genre.
Aside from all of that, development simply takes time, and some games lack the resources (though that’s true for all kinds of games, not specially MOBA). It’s fairly common, especially in Kickstarter games, to see game projects postponed or even cancelled. And it’s pretty hard for small developers to compete against large game developers which a large fanbase.