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Heroes of Newerth drops support for Linux and Mac

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Heroes of Newerth, the MOBA originally from S2 Games which is now handled by Frostburn Studios has dropped Linux and Mac support.

On their official forum, a Mac user was asking for help to download and install it. The response from the team wasn't the kind of help expected, as they said:

Garena has made the decision that the Mac & Linux clients will no longer be officially supported.

As a result, the links for the Mac & Linux download have been removed.

The popularity of the game is nowhere near what it once was. I remember a lot of talk about it in the earlier days, with a lot of people excited about it. Eventually it went free to play and it seems S2 Games decided to abandon a sinking ship with Garena acquiring it from them in 2015, with Frostburn Studios taking over as developer of the title.

I'll be honest here, I couldn't care less about it personally. The last time i tried it, it was the single most toxic experience I've ever had in an online game. I've played a lot of online games and even so it was still at a level I had not seen before. I tried to go back to it a few times, never with a happy ending. Still, sad for any remaining Linux (and Mac) fans of the game.

Looking over some statistics, it's not popular with viewers either. Around 180 on Twitch compared with nearly 100K for League of Legends and over 50K for Dota 2.

If I want to play a MOBA, I will jump into Dota 2. It works well, it's supported and when you have a good team it's a damn fun game too.

Thanks, Naib.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: MOBA
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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28 comments
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toor Dec 14, 2018
That moba had a bad community, but it was the best MOBA I have ever played, very dynamic gameplay compared to other mobas, even dota2
hardpenguin Dec 14, 2018
Wow, I am really salty about this one. More reasons to play Dota 2 I suppose.
Naib Dec 14, 2018
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Quoting: GuestDid anyone even play this anymore?
Up until last month I still did.. I had about 2-5min queue times so it was alive enough to be commited.

I am really pissed at what Frostburn have done with this game. I had been playing it since Closed beta... Did tones on linux techsupport, was a global moderator, wrote and vetted in-game bots, helped with ogl stuff and SBT.

Then a month or so ago they released the two kongor update (which i hated in SBT) which completely changed the game for the worse as it was simply Kongor's of Newerth as well as BridgeWars (they messed with midwars soo much).

That said, the game was on its final last legs as Garena went into the US offices a couple of months ago and basically immediately terminated peoples contracts and a subset was given extensions of 3months (prob some golden parachute... ) to finalise aspects of the game.
The game is essentially dead in NAEU while in asia it is doing ok.

S2 fked with a good title and WZA sealed it with his bad balancing. It is/was an extremely toxic game but the plays were good. Sadly missed, especially due to all I put in but meh, bad management is bad


I am glad I jumped to DOTA when I did, it has vastly improved from when I first tried it (post launch) and it got me out of HoN before they pulled the rug.


Last edited by Naib on 14 December 2018 at 6:18 pm UTC
erlaan Dec 14, 2018
Quoting: Naib
Quoting: GuestDid anyone even play this anymore?
Up until last month I still did.. I had about 2-5min queue times so it was alive enough to be commited.

I am really pissed at what Frostburn have done with this game. I had been playing it since Closed beta... Did tones on linux techsupport, was a global moderator, wrote and vetted in-game bots, helped with ogl stuff and SBT.

Then a month or so ago they released the two kongor update (which i hated in SBT) which completely changed the game for the worse as it was simply Kongor's of Newerth as well as BridgeWars (they messed with midwars soo much).

That said, the game was on its final last legs as Garena went into the US offices a couple of months ago and basically immediately terminated peoples contracts and a subset was given extensions of 3months (prob some golden parachute... ) to finalise aspects of the game.
The game is essentially dead in NAEU while in asia it is doing ok.

S2 fked with a good title and WZA sealed it with his bad balancing. It is/was an extremely toxic game but the plays were good. Sadly missed, especially due to all I put in but meh, bad management is bad


I am glad I jumped to DOTA when I did, it has vastly improved from when I first tried it (post launch) and it got me out of HoN before they pulled the rug.

I started HoN Today and started to play and was on the way to buy wards and there was kongor and I was like wtf is this. True the dubble kongor is a bad thing. And when you can run on the side in the forest and come behind and kill one. Because you do not have wards to cover a litle pathway.

But sad news that it going to the grave on Linux and Mac. I loved HoN back in the days when it was in Beta and up to it got Free to play.
KohlyKohl Dec 14, 2018
Quoting: constThe fact that the s2games homepage is not responding nor found via google has me much more worrying.
Always found their games very hard to get into, because of the steep learning curve and a culture of pros having fun to crash newbies instead of helping them. It was plain frustrating. Anyway, they were among the first studios to jump on the linux train and with passion. :/

I'm going guess that they went out of business at the end of 2017. They released Brawl of Ages which didn't go anywhere. They then abandoned it and tried to resurrect Strife. That also went no where. You can see all of this on their twitter feed.

https://twitter.com/s2games

Looking at glassdoor reviews, it paints a pretty bad picture for the company and explains all of the poor decisions that were made.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/S2-Games-Reviews-E698459.htm

Here is an article on why the CEO sold Heroes of Newerth:

https://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2015/06/ceo_of_video_game_maker_s2_gam.html


Last edited by KohlyKohl on 14 December 2018 at 6:46 pm UTC
dubigrasu Dec 14, 2018
Regardless of the current situation, is still a bit sad news though. I remember these games way, way back supporting Linux when few others did.
Edit: and oh, it worked (at least at one point) very well on Linux, I have this comparison from few years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccpP-TAJyus


Last edited by dubigrasu on 14 December 2018 at 7:12 pm UTC
Naib Dec 14, 2018
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Quoting: dubigrasuRegardless of the current situation, is still a bit sad news though. I remember these games way, way back supporting Linux when few others did.
Edit: and oh, it worked (at least at one point) very well on Linux, I have this comparison from few years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccpP-TAJyus
I remember that, I was working with [S2]Slacker as he was really optimising OGL. I was busy doing regression testing of all artefacts for what he was doing.

The most disappointing out of all this is the Linux build was the easiest and most reliable to maintain. OSX was a pig and windows would break every now and again....
inlinuxdude Dec 14, 2018
Quoting: toorThat moba had a bad community, but it was the best MOBA I have ever played, very dynamic gameplay compared to other mobas, even dota2

I'd never had exposure to MOBA's when HoN was released for Linux. I installed it and was checking it out, watching some online games, tried to learn a bit of strategy, etc... I decided to jump in to one after a while.. I let everyone know I was a noob, etc. I had one guy say, "great, but gave me a couple basic tips and told me good luck", and everyone else basically rip'ed me and treated me like a pariah... after a couple rounds, I never played again, and uninstalled it after a few weeks. I've never played a MOBA again..
johnc Dec 14, 2018
Quoting: inlinuxdude
Quoting: toorThat moba had a bad community, but it was the best MOBA I have ever played, very dynamic gameplay compared to other mobas, even dota2

I'd never had exposure to MOBA's when HoN was released for Linux. I installed it and was checking it out, watching some online games, tried to learn a bit of strategy, etc... I decided to jump in to one after a while.. I let everyone know I was a noob, etc. I had one guy say, "great, but gave me a couple basic tips and told me good luck", and everyone else basically rip'ed me and treated me like a pariah... after a couple rounds, I never played again, and uninstalled it after a few weeks. I've never played a MOBA again..

I remember installing it years ago, might have been 2009 when about the only games available for Linux were Doom 3 and Enemy Territory. It was good, technically at the time though I remember even then it was full of toxic children and I uninstalled it after the first game. I hate MOBA's too and I hope they all go out of business.
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