Heroes of the Storm isn’t the first game lacking the esports support of its developer. In fact, many games never have this kind of support and develop great communities anyway. Most of these games have something in common: they are fighting games.

In the Fighting Games Community (FGC), games usually have a long lifespan because even if players move on to newer games, they keep playing the old titles from time to time anyway. In fact, these games still appear in some tournaments as side events. As a complement for EVO (Evolution Championship Series), AnimEVO brings back old games alongside current ones that didn’t make it to the main event. In its 2019 edition, AnimEVO gathered more than a thousand players.

You may wonder, how can the FGC organize all these events, especially for games without any player base nowadays? Through self-financing. Most fighting games events have an entrance fee that allows players to join the tournament and stay in the venue playing and training with other competitors. However, only one out of many contenders can become victorious. But that isn’t a barrier for people to join. Many still go to experience the adrenaline rush of competition and to meet other people with similar hobbies.





Could this finance model be adopted by Heroes tournaments? In fighting games players stand for themselves instead of being part of a team, so it’s their own decision to join a tournament and to pay the fee. They don’t need to convince their teammates, so it’s clearly easier for them.Luckily, we don’t need to theorize about this matter. There’s already a tournament with this system in the Heroes scene.

Liga HOTSEA

Since 2017, HOTSEA has been a regular league for the Spanish Heroes scene. Besides hosting their own league, they have also broadcasted many international tournaments from the HGC to the Masters Clash and Division S. Their premier division includes eight teams which have to pay an entrance fee of €50 per team. New teams coming from their open division through the crucible don’t need to pay anything. The result is a prize pool that stays the same and is completely self-funded.

The system seems to work! They’re currently in their eighth season, and teams keep joining the open division. The league consists of a double round-robin Bo5 series followed by playoffs, where the winner takes 50% of the prize pool and the rest is split between second through fourth (30%, 15%, 5%). Moreover, a most valuable player is chosen in each one of the two round-robin stages and is given additional prize money. Though teams must have four Spanish players or people living in Spain, the fifth doesn’t have a nationality restriction.





HOTSEA may not be known outside its country, but there they’ve made an effort to reach a wider audience by partnering with a Spanish esports and gaming site to publish weekly reports of their league so people can easily keep track of what’s going on. They even partnered with esports bars to stream their games there.

The Competitive Mentality

Heroes of the Storm has a great amateur scene. There are more than a hundred teams in the Heroes Lounge and Nexus Gaming Series leagues, and Malganyr’s Nexus Cup gathered more than 50 teams even with a regional player requirement. However, most of the teams seem afraid to aim higher. We’re not talking about becoming professionals, just joining the highest tier tournaments. Out of potentially a hundred teams, only ten signed up for HeroesHype Cup 3 in Europe and only six in its North American counterpart.

Blurring the line between pros, semi-pros, and amateurs is something necessary to keep the scene alive without big sponsors. We need to get to the point where, like the FGC, “everyone competes”. This is already happening in China, the healthiest region in terms of competitive Heroes. There, more than 30 teams joined the qualifiers for both Gold Series Heroes League seasons. They would have to face BTG, CE, SPT or TheOne, but it doesn’t matter; they just want to have a good time. But it needs to happen overseas in our Western region too.





We need to step up as a community. If you want to join the HeroesHype cups, check their site for the dates of their next tournaments, both for North America and Europe. If you want to check how Liga HOTSEA is doing, you can watch their games Monday to Thursday at 22:00 CEST on their Twitch channel. As Cloaken used to say, we’ll see you in the Nexus.