Death of a Game: Paladins

The best Overwatch clone.

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#DOAG . Death of a Game is a series dedicated to uncovering the mysteries surrounding the death of a game or company. nerdSlayer defines the term "death" in the context of the show as either... 1. Literally dead. 2. Had a mass exodus of players and never recovered (expectations etc). 3. The company ceased to exist. We follow a timeline of events, to uncover clues concerning why a game or company doesn't do well, and attempt to put it all together at the end for a deduction explaining how or why the game failed based on the evidence gathered.

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Sources:

[nerdSlayerstudioss]

Hello detectives, we have returned to cover more Hi-Rez, and the "Hi-Rez Effect". I wanted to thank you all for the continued support, including the feedback for the video editing we have been receiving of late (we have a new team of editors). Please continue to offer more feedback, suggestions for the series or cases, and more!

Note: One point I really wish I mentioned in this video, credit to dangodofthunder for helping me remember, is that Paladins is a FPS that has barely of the character shown...so it's quite hard to monetize skins for a game like that. Compare this to Overwatch, which cost a box price, and you realize one was reliant on skins...and the other wasn't...not entirely.

[caseyedwards]

hey, last art director for Paladins here (22nd person hired on Paladins in 2016) upon being laid off in July 2024 - but generally no notes. The UE3 factor also cast a long and problematic shadow, but that's the only clear clue that got missed.

Thanks for the love regardless, the team was always small and when influencers have guessed at team size, they've been off by half or more.

[misao]

Hi-Rez back at it again. Turning diamonds into coal.

[erleinmayer]

There are some things that I think everyone should know:
- Everyone at Evil Mojo got layed off, it no longer exists. Currently Paladins is not in hiatus, it is actually dead.
- Evil Mojo had zero support from Hirez. It felt Hirez was intentionally sabotaging Paladins.
- Evil Mojo was a very small team, you could probably count them all with your fingers.
- Paladins 2 was in development, but it got cancelled to focus into Smite 2.
- the Evil Mojo devs were the most passionate dev team in Paladins history, even more than the ones from 2016 to 2023. They definitely cared about community feedback.
It is such an unfortunate outcome but an expected one. Hirez doesn't deserve Paladins and they don't deserve their community.

[AndrewChicken]

Great video. As a former long time Paladins content creator I have a few notes!

In 2020, the game had brutally awful server issues which stemmed the growth it otherwise could've received. Many games saw a big jump in players due to quarantine, and Paladins actually saw a bit of a bump as well. However, the servers were so bad at times that the game was literally unplayable, and this prevented the game from growing as much as it should've during that time.

The game could've very well died in 2022. For most of the year, it felt like the devs just didn't care about the game and weren't listening to the players. They kept releasing slop champions every single update that were literally broken when they came out, and many of them were not fun for one reason or another. Also, the game was plagued by a sound bug for more than half the year where sometimes characters just wouldn't play any sound effects - you can see why that's a problem. And, the game had no competent community manager for the entire year. It was looking really bad.

In 2023, Evil Mojo got their act together and became almost completely community oriented to a fault. They brought back many of the things that Hi-Rez removed from the game in years past, like the payload game mode, survival game mode, and those giant maps from the closed beta that were so fun to play on. The game actually made a comeback in the summer of that year because of these efforts. The balance became a lot better and the game genuinely became more fun to play. The sad thing is, the Evil Mojo team kept losing members due to layoffs and being shuffled to Smite 2 development, so they literally didn't have the developers to make any new champions or new maps. The devs that were left were extremely passionate about the game and wanted to to bigger things, but they physically couldn't because Hi-Rez didn't give them the resources. They were doing incredible things with what little they had, right up until the end.

The dev team also got mostly replaced every couple of years, with new faces popping up and changing the direction of the game. Paladins always had a few core design tenets that made the game great, but the rest of its identity was constantly changing in regards to the balance. They only had a rare few developers stick with it until the end, and it wasn't enough to keep the ship steady and give the game the strong identity it needed to be more successful.

I'm so sad because the game could've been so much more if Hi-Rez wasn't the worst game development company on this planet. If I could describe Hi-Rez in one word, it would be "mismanagement". You're right that Paladins could've been so much more, but it was always second fiddle to Smite and Hi-Rez never put enough faith in it to be anything more than "that game we made that's second place to Overwatch in the mainstream and second place to Smite in our hearts."

[fentanylfrog]

One of the saddest DOAGs for me. I hate how Hi-Rez treats their games, hopping trends instead of nurturing existing games.
Paladins has such a unique charm to it, from the gameplay to character designs. Been obsessed with Marvel Rivals, and excited for Overwatch introducing perks, but I’ll always have a place in my heart for Paladins.

[Lollygaggins]

Hirez is a failure of a company and the only one to blame is the top, Stew the ceo. Multiple teams, multiple titles, and a multitude of projects ruined by ridiculous, short sighted decisions.

[protoyeen]

I'm sad because I grew up playing this game as a teenager, to me it felt better than Overwatch.

[paschalasobirionwu]

Long-time Paladins player here.

One thing you didn't mention is how rushed the transition from beta to full release was. After two years in beta, you’d expect the full release to come when the game had reached its full potential in terms of stability and features. Instead, Hi-Rez simply removed the beta label to push out a half-baked version for the Nintendo Switch (which didn’t allow games in beta at the time). Ironically, the Switch version was discontinued a few years later.

[LermyWermy]

Former developer and longtime HiRez >>game<< fan here - thanks for covering our little corner of gaming. After being laid off from Smite / Smite 2 in that February bunch, it's been very painful, yet healing to look back at the games' histories. Excited to see your coverage of Smite - between playing it for 10 years and working on it for 5, it's one of my most beloved games of all time, despite it all.

[brianyegerlehner]

Dude I loved this game. I wanted it to succeed. So sad to see where it fell.

[Superflylilboy]

Yo, one of the previous Paladins community managers here. Just wanted to chime in and say that Evil Mojo really poured a lot of passion into this project till the very end.

It felt like HiRez always shafted Paladins in pursuit of new projects, only to drop them later. It was a real disappointment to see something with so much potential be pushed aside for something like Divine Knockout

[gstellar]

Thank you for hosting what is in essence this game's funeral. Rip my Goats Bomb King, Talus, Koga, and Ying

[hadiperdana]

Hi-rez challanged Makoa, and the game died. RIP my goat Makoa

[Sottoth]

Alright, this one hurts, i spent so many years playing this game, enduring hi-rez's incompetence, coping hard that "it will get better eventually" well, joke's on me i guess

good bye Drogoz, ill never forget you buddy :)

[mnguele]

I loved Paladins bc it wasn't a OW clone, it was a TF2 clone, with great movement and much customizability

[VanguardJester]

after spiral knights got put on "maintenance mode" for 11 years, seeing another game get put on "maintenance mode" really put a dagger in my heart

[ClaraTehKitty]

I have over 1000 hours in Paladin so this one was a deep pain. I'll miss you Furia.

[amiralirashedi]

-takes a drag from a large cigar "Ah OB64, haven't heard that name in years"

[battlericky]

For me, this game had so much untapped potential and there was alot of good character designs and semi fun monetization but they definitely ruined themselves with numerous dumb moves.