Sounds like HGC players were given no warning:
"My Life is In Shambles Now" - Pro Players Were Unprepared for the End of Heroes of the Storm Esports
"My Life is In Shambles Now" - Pro Players Were Unprepared for the End of Heroes of the Storm Esports
"only found out today," says Joseph 'Nabby' Magdaong who coached esports organization Dignitas' Heroes of the Storm team. Dignitas was a top-performing esports team in Heroes and, according to them, a team that ended their Heroes of the Storm career as the second most successful team of all time in the esport. Surely if any team were to get a head's up from Blizzard it would have been one from the top tier. But, "like most the [Heroes of the Storm] community this news only got to me on the same day," says Magdaong.
Unlike Magdaong who worked for an established Heroes of the Storm, Lauber was kicked from a Heroes of the Storm team after the last phase in 2018 and worked his way up through the game's amateur Open Division with a new team. At the end of this open season the top performing amateur team has a chance to replace the bottom performing Heroes of the Storm team not unlike the Premier League system in European football.
Lauber and his team won and were ready to play in next year's season which Lauber believed to be in the works considering Blizzard reached out to him after his qualifying finals. "[Blizzard] asked us for information and stuff, then I had some follow up questions that they said they would get answers [to] me soon but never did," says Lauber. This was sometime in October 2018, just two months ago. After that it was "basically radio silence."