Epic Games is planning to shutter their MOBA Paragon this April. This announcement comes soon after Epic posted a blog on the future of Paragon after V.45 gets pushed.
You can see the full initial statement here.
We know you have a lot of questions about the future of Paragon. We care deeply about this community and we know this is important to you, so here’s a summary of where we are.
Going from Legacy to Monolith to a new card system and all of the changes in-between, our efforts have always been focused on growing the game. While each of these incarnations has been beloved by a core community, none has been large enough to achieve mainstream success. This, combined with the humbling success of Fortnite has caused us to question if we have a good path to grow Paragon and make it thrive.
Work on Paragon continues. V.45 ships this week with both Hero and Card balance as well as stability improvements.
However, progress has been slower lately for two reasons: First, the team’s time is split between immediate improvements and longer-term efforts, so there’s less visible progress. Second, a number of Paragon team members jumped onto Fortnite to help sustain the game as it has grown far larger than anything in Epic’s past.
Here inside Epic, we’re talking about the future of Paragon in pretty much the same terms as you’re talking about it. The core challenge is that, of new players who try Paragon, only a small number continue to play regularly after a month. Though Paragon has evolved, no iteration has yet achieved that magical combination of ingredients that make for a sustainable game. (As an aside, the problem isn’t marketing or how to make money with Paragon. We have good ideas that would solve those problems if we can find a way to make Paragon grow.)
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be figuring out if and how we can evolve Paragon to achieve growth and success, and trying some things internally. In the meantime, Paragon’s release cadence will be slower.
We welcome your thoughts on what we should do. Like you, the team is deeply passionate about Paragon. Like you, we would love to find a path that works. And like the community at large, we are not all in agreement on what could place Paragon on a fundamentally better path for all.
We will always be transparent with the community, and this is where we are right now. As we have more information, we will share it with you.
Coming off the heels of that announcement, some of the community were engaged in hopeful optimism in threads reacting to the announcement.
It turns out that Epic are shifting the majority of their focus on the far-more-successful Fortnite. While it’s sad for the community, it’s a sensible business decision for Epic to take this course. Paragon will be a thing of the past on April 26th 2018.
While the community expected something like this might happen based on last week’s statement, yesterday’s news was a tough blow. Other developers and subreddit founders dropped into the Paragon Reddit channel to offer their sympathies, including RIOT games. The community also rallied on Reddit and pushed the thread called ‘Please Sell Paragon to another developer’ to the front page of Reddit.
Epic are offering full refunds on Paragon across all platforms, and give instructions for claiming your money back on their official site here.
