Community Hearthstone Tournament Site StriveWire Shuts Down Unexpectedly

Hearthstone has been the most popular online card game for some time now, and one of the most popular community tournament platforms, StriveWire, has unexpectedly shut down this week. Many community members have been left completely unable to withdraw their balances and tournament winnings.

The site offered small tournaments, some with entry fees and some without, but most rewarded the victor of each tournament with monetary prizes. A lot of pro players used the site, contributing to its legitimacy. It also recently rebranded to 1vs1.gg within the last month, implying that the site wasn’t facing many troubles. Visiting the site now reads:

“We've been working on StriveWire for the last few years with all our passion and enthusiasm to create the worlds best eSports platform.

Unfortunately we could not acquire sufficient traction and funding to reach a decent size.

We have applied for insolvency and have stopped the business. No payments can be made at present. Payouts will be resumed once insolvency process kicks in. This might take a few weeks or months.

Thanks for your understanding.”

According to Dot Esports, the amount owed to players by StriveWire is “well over $3,000”. In addition, Dot Esports spoke to a designer who worked on the site who said that they’d never had an issue of delayed payments, and that the news of their closure has come as a surprise. It’s a severe blow for up and coming Hearthstone players as it was one of the biggest sites in terms of tournaments and competitive gameplay.

In other Hearthstone news, card nerfs very recently went live and the meta is still shifting, and game director Ben Brode left Blizzard last month.

(Header image courtesy of Blizzad Entertainment.)