Paragon Players Say Goodbye To Closing Game With Final Tournament

Paragon was a MOBA trying to stand out in a market that was already hard to survive in. While many of the more active games were on PC, consoles started to slowly pick up more and more games in that genre. Things like Smite, Battleborn, and Overwatch to name a few all were released around that time and even at its height Paragon never met the expectations set by Epic Games. The players that did continuously show their skills in Paragon though, have shown a ton of passion and sorrowfully must say goodbye in April as Epic Games shuts down the servers permanently.

Here is an official statement from Epic on the decision to do so. 

“Hey Everyone,

It’s with heavy hearts we’ve decided to close down Paragon.

We truly appreciate everything you’ve put into Paragon. We received many passionate ideas for where to take the game; the outpouring of thoughtful suggestions is another testament to this incredible community.

After careful consideration, and many difficult internal debates, we feel there isn’t a clear path for us to grow Paragon into a MOBA that retains enough players to be sustainable.

We didn’t execute well enough to deliver on the promise of Paragon. We have failed you -- despite the team’s incredibly hard work -- and we’re sorry.

To try to make this right, Epic is offering a full refund to every Paragon player for every purchase on any platform. This refund will come directly from Epic rather than your platform provider.”

While the news is sad for anyone playing regularly, the fact that Epic are offering a complete refund is pretty satisfying to see, especially in a gaming genre known to milk players with predatory loot boxes and gated content. 

To celebrate the time spent with the game, a group got together to put on one more tournament. The Paragon Competitive League put on the tourney in early February. The Salt Squad ended up taking the EU gold, but the weight of this loss could be felt, despite some excellent plays throughout.

Watch PCL: Farewell | EU - Grand Final from ParagonCompetitiveLeague on www.twitch.tv

To truly understand what is being lost, we talked to player Anothernotch, the founder of the PCL. As someone who has helped put together events for the game and was one of the first streamers to try it out in the Epic studios, Anothernotch shows a deep love for the title and he community built around it. We asked him how the imminent shutdown has affected his life. 

“This has been super hard,” said Anothernotch through Discord. He streamed Paragon full-time and was one of the more prominent content creators for it. 

When asked what he thought could have attributed to the fall of Paragon, he believed that “mismanagement” was perhaps the biggest factor.

I just think they didn't have a clear path and nothing they did seemed to work,” Anothernotch added. 

Reflecting on starting with Paragon, Anothernotch told us how he got into it in the first place. 

“I actually started streaming 2 years before Paragon launched,” he recalled. “I started with Heroes of the Storm. I was not a fan of the direction Blizzard was taking the game at the time and then I saw the Paragon launch trailer and started tweeting about the game.”

“I got into the closed testing early and then was lucky enough to get invited to Epic Games in February of 2016. Then I was invited back again for the early access launch event to stream from Epic. On March 16th when it hit, I didn't look back.” 

Anothernotch created all sorts of things from Paragon and was hugely active in building a constant community around himself and the game based on events, content creation, and more.

“I ran a podcast, streamed it daily, then started running and casting the first event known as Agoras Rising.”

Game companies have a tendency to recruit players like Anothernotch, so we asked if he was employed by Epic at all. According to him, he was never really on an Epic payroll. It was all just out of his own enthusiasm for the game.

“It was all volunteer,” Anothernotch claimed. “I just loved the game and wanted to see it grow. I also wanted to try something new with event organisation and casting.” 

Anothernotch was the first streamer to showcase the title on Twitch. He even got to stream the game from Epic to celebrate the game’s launch. 

“The best moment for me,” Anothernotch recalled, “Was the phone call I received from Epic asking me to be the first streamer to showcase the game on Twitch. I was a small fry at the time, who was just passionate about a video game. I got flown out and was shown all the secret goodies. Then I got to be on the first Paragon broadcast on the home page of Twitch. After that stream ended, I was able to stream from my personal channel and was featured on the home page. It was an incredible moment for me. I had grinded so hard for this chance and I got it. I ended up streaming at Epic for 14 hours. I would of gone longer, but they had work the next day and the community management team needed sleep.”

Most certainly Anothernotch is sadly closing a chapter on his gaming life, but he claims some silver linings. Even though the game is ending, Anothernotch is happy with the connections between people that have turned into friendships in his time with Paragon. 

“I've had the chance to interact with a lot of the community and its been a blast,” claimed Anothernotch. “The broadcasters in the Paragon community are amazing and I am fortunate to call some of them my friends.”

Anothernotch is now on the search for a different game that he can stick with. Since the fall of Paragon, he’s seen a major decrease of interaction, views, and subscriptions on his streams. That said he is eager to find another game to really dive deep into.

“Personally, I’m trying to figure it out,” he said. “Since the announcement I have lost 80 subs and about 100 viewers; it's been a lot of stress. For PCL we are looking at making content for Fortnite.”

 

Fortnite’s ever-increasing success may be another likely reason on why Paragon was abandoned. Fortnite also had a long development period and continues to see additional content regularly. The game has taken off in popularity at an exponential rate as well. With all the energy around, it was probably hard to ignore sending more resources to it, likely taking away from those working on Paragon. 

We asked him if he could see Epic either remaking the game in some way or doing something else in the MOBA genre. According to Anothernotch, employees at Epic have made it starkly clear to him that there’s not a chance of the game coming back.

“Everyone I have talked to at Epic has made it clear the game is done.” 

There is also the question of how Paragon can be preserved from a historical point of view. As of now, there hasn’t been any talks of private servers or anything, especially an official one. 

“Not from Epic,” Anothernotch clarifies. “I think they are 100% moving on.” There is also no offline way to play with bots or anything, making every copy of the game unplayable once the servers die. 

Sadly, Paragon never left it’s early access phase. There had been talk of a full release and there was even physical copies of the game at retail locations, but it will forever stand unfinished. Despite this, for those like Anothernotch who put their passion into the game and build connections through it, there are at least the memories and the friendships that came of it. Here’s hoping Anothernotch finds that kind of passion in another game worth his time.

For those that need that refund, use this link to learn how. 

Want to see Anothernotch in action and follow his gaming and community efforts? You can find him streaming on Twitch.

Meanwhile, we jumped into Fortnite to personally explore the draw that has brought so many players over. Find out how our experience influenced our perspective on the Battle Royale genre.