Revealed to the world in mid-2013, Dawngate was intended to be EA's triumphant entry into the lucrative, League of Legends-dominated MOBA genre. But a little more than six months after the open beta began, the plug has been pulled.
"We built a game in Dawngate that wasn’t simply a clone of existing MOBAs, but one that truly pushed the genre forward in many ways," Group General Manager Matt Bromberg said in today's announcement of the cancellation. But while the game has been in various forms of beta testing for almost 18 months, "we're not seeing the progress we'd hoped for," he continued. "This isn’t the outcome we wanted, but beta testing is about learning and improving, and ultimately, about making difficult decisions about how to proceed."
Dawngate will continue to operate for 90 days, and players will be given full refunds of any money they spent on the game during the beta. Bromberg said most of those refunds should be processed within the next ten days, but players who don't have current payment information on file will need to contact the company first at help.ea.com. For those who want to see what they missed out on, the client is, for now at least, still available for download at Dawngate.com. As for developer Waystone Games, its fate isn't clear at this point, but is unlikely to be good.