VSuper Evil Mega Corp (SEMC), the developer of Vainglory, has revealed its future plans for the game and its esports scene in two separate blog posts to the community.
SEMC has decided to shift focus away from esports, according to the blog posts. It further emphasized that handling a fully-fledged esports scene requires a lot of devotion of time and resources. This sapped huge amounts of time from the development team, which obstructed them from making Vainglory a better game.
Vainglory’s transition from a three-vs-three MOBA to five-vs-five wasn’t as successful as the developers hoped. “5v5 did not resonate with the wider audience the way we thought it might,” SEMC said.
The move to five-vs-five saw the esports scene of the game die out and also split the player base into two: players who were fans of five-vs-five and the others who were addicted to Vainglory’s one-of-a-kind three-vs-three experience.
At its peak, Vainglory had some of the biggest esports organizations, like Cloud9, TSM, and G2 Esports, fielding teams in the game. A lack of communication by SEMC after the release of five-vs-five saw almost all of these teams pull out of the scene, however.
SEMC will now be taking a supportive role in esports. The developers will continue to support esports initiatives while the main focus will be the development of the gameplay experience.
The developers also revealed what happened to the game’s API, which has been out of service for a while. “Supporting the full functionality of the API in its current iteration became more and more difficult for the team to keep up with, due to the pace of our update cycles and shifts in focus,” SEMC said.
SEMC is working on multiple new projects alongside Vainglory, though. Until now, Vainglory has been the studio’s only creation. But the Vainglory universe is going to be expanded. In addition, a lot of announcements are coming, including some “big news” this winter.
