Despite the surge in Overwatch players since Blizzard’s decision to drop the 2 and take the hero shooter in a new direction earlier this year, the noise around its MOBA-inspired Stadium mode has died down. And so has its popularity, which has prompted a halt in development plans according to a new blog post by game director Aaron Keller.
Keller provided daily player counts for each mode as of June 28. The data shows that around 54% of players queue up for 5v5 unranked, while only 3% of them head into unranked or ranked Stadium. Even the 6v6 modes are more popular.
Because of this, Blizzard has decided to stop adding new heroes and maps to Stadium. Keller says “we’ll continue supporting Stadium with seasonal balance updates, rank resets, and rewards,” but the team of developers previously focused on it will be moving on to other projects.
Stadium is basically an over-the-top version of Overwatch where you create MOBA-style builds with items and powers that transform your hero’s abilities, like shrinking Ashe’s robot sidekick B.O.B. into a mini killing machine. People ate it up in the first few weeks it was out, making it one of Overwatch’s most-played modes. But with only a portion of the game’s roster available to play, it started to fall behind on updates as Blizzard began rapidly releasing new heroes for the rest of the game. Season 1’s Jetpack Cat was the last hero to be Stadium-ified.