{"id":11433,"date":"2018-01-26T20:26:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T20:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/313788"},"modified":"2018-01-26T20:26:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T20:26:00","slug":"epic-is-closing-down-paragon-and-offering-refunds-to-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/01\/26\/epic-is-closing-down-paragon-and-offering-refunds-to-players\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic is closing down Paragon and offering refunds to players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Epic Games has announced<\/a> that it is closing down its free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena title Paragon<\/em> following player retention issues that made the game unsustainable.<\/p>\n

The game itself was Epic’s attempt to join titles like\u00a0League of Legends\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Dota 2<\/em>\u00a0in the free-to-play MOBA\u00a0genre, though Paragon<\/em> notably struggled to gain a foothold in that field both as an Early Access title in 2016 and, later, as a free-to-play beta in early 2017.<\/p>\n

The developer publicly detailed some of the obstacles Paragon<\/em> was facing<\/a> in a Reddit post last week, saying that the team would have to take some time to evaluate if it was possible to transition Paragon<\/em> into a sustainable online game.<\/p>\n

Just over one week later, Epic now says \u201cthere isn\u2019t a clear path\u201d to sustainability for Paragon<\/em> and that it will be closing the game down on April 26 as a result. However, the developer has promised that it will refund players for every purchase made within the free-to-play game since its release, no matter if those purchases were made on console or PC.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Previously Epic had explained that the success of Fortnite: Battle Royale<\/em>, its other free-to-play venture, was causing the company to rethink the future of Paragon. In that previous Reddit post, the developer explained that members of the Paragon team had to be pulled over to Fornite<\/em>\u00a0to help the game cope with its unexpected growth.<\/p>\n

That, coupled\u00a0with the fact that new Paragon<\/em> players seldom stuck with the game beyond their first month of playing, caused Epic to sit down and reevaluate its strategy with the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter careful consideration, and many difficult internal debates, we feel there isn\u2019t a clear path for us to grow Paragon<\/em> into a MOBA that retains enough players to be sustainable,\u201d explains a post from Epic. \u201cWe didn\u2019t execute well enough to deliver on the promise of Paragon<\/em>. We have failed you — despite the team\u2019s incredibly hard work — and we\u2019re sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Epic Games has announced that it is closing down its free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena title Paragon following player retention issues that made the game unsustainable. The game itself was Epic’s attempt to join titles like\u00a0League of Legends\u00a0and\u00a0Dota 2\u00a0in the free-to-play MOBA\u00a0genre, though Paragon notably struggled to gain a foothold in that field both as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}