The popular MOBA Heroes of Newerth has been acquired by Garena, who has been the publisher for the game in Southeast Asia, and Frostburn Studios will be taking over as the new official developer for the title.
Luckily, since Garena has also acquired the full development team, very few jobs (if any) will be lost in the transition. Given that this is HoN's fifth anniversary, any news of the contrary would have been quite disheartening.
Bran "Konran" Bower, Studio Director for Frostburn Studios, has unveiled the studio's plans for the game moving forward in a statement on Facebook:
Driven by our commitment to transparency, integrity, and respect, we will be working closely with the community to shape HoN into the game we all want to be playing and providing you with insight into our decisions. The way we see it, HoN is a game developed for gamers by gamers. This means your opinions matter just as much as ours and we want to be enhancing the game for you and with you.
Frostburn Studios has already brought the Sol's Theater custom map, the new Blitz Mode and The Grimm Hunt, a game stability patched that released today, and a large prize pool of $700,000 for HoN Tour Season 3. So they have the pedigree and the experience to propel Heroes of Newerth forward.
The developer already has several plans in the works, including the new hero Parallax, The Artificer, a new Capture the Flag mode which releases today (video above), and plenty of changes to the existing roster of characters. Additionally, a quarter of all revenue generated from the game's 8-Bit Collection content will be put towards the game's appearance at DreamHack Summer 2015.
