The company has decided to cancel Dawngate before it left beta.

EA has decided to shelve its new MOBA Dawngate before it even made it through beta testing. This is a sad development to be sure; the game had some promising concepts to build upon assuming it generated a healthy playerbase (which seems to have been the issue). The cancellation was announced by Group General Manager Matt Bromberg. In the post he gave EA's reasoning as to why they had to make the difficult decision to shut down the game:

"Today, I have the unenviable task of announcing that we’ve decided to stop development of Dawngate. 

I know this is disappointing news for our community, which has been so supportive and loyal.  To all of you who have graciously given us your time and valuable feedback during our beta period, we'd first like to thank you.

Whenever we begin a game project, we do so with great hopes and expectations.  In this case, we chose to enter a new genre for EA in MOBA, one that we knew going in was extremely competitive. 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. Dawngate has been in beta for almost 18 months, including a full open beta for the past six months. Through that time, we’ve taken a lot of feedback from players and delivered lots of new features and innovations.  And although the game has grown, we’re not seeing the progress we’d hoped for.   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."

The game servers will continue to run for a 90 day period before they are shut down. Players who have spent real money on the game will see their money fully refunded. Little is known as to what will be happening to the talented team at Waystone Games, but the outlook isn't very positive if history has anything to teach us. It's hard to watch a game shut down so early in its life cycle, but at the same time one has to acknowledge the courage it takes shutting down a game that is failing. We can only wish for the best for the team at Waystone.

If you want to play before the game is gone forever, log on in the next couple of months and get your last few matches in before we have to say goodbye.

Ian Nowakowski

Follow me! @ian_nowakowski