Bethesda Pulls the Plug on Elder Scrolls: Legends - No Longer in Active Development

Published 5 years, 11 months ago by

It looks like another great digital card game, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, has been axed by Bethesda. Community Manager, CVH, had this to say about the state of the game.

  • TESL is no longer under development
  • They will still support the game with in-game events and monthly rewards
  • Loads of new free cards on login (which I can assume were from the next expansion)

Quote From CVH

We would like to provide an update on Legends in regard to new content. Our previous roadmap indicated we would be releasing one more set this year. We decided to put any new content development or releases on hold for the foreseeable future. This decision will not in any way affect the release and development of GAEA’s Asia-specific version of Legends, which is operated separately, but will inform our decisions on content and feature development going forward.

Until then, you can still download and play Legends on all existing platforms and compete online as well as in the single-player modes. We will also continue to support the game with monthly reward cards and regular in-game events. New expansions and other future content, however, are no longer under active development. We will continue to provide ongoing maintenance support.

To thank you all for supporting Legends these past few years, and for continuing to play with us, we are giving away The Tamriel Collection – an assortment of new, three-attribute cards and more – to all players for free upon their next login. We are immensely grateful to work on The Elder Scrolls: Legends, to have you as a community, and we sincerely appreciate the love and support you’ve given us.

Developer Sparkypants also shared the following about their departure from TESL.

Quote From Sparkypants

To all our fans,

As you may have already heard, Bethesda has shared news regarding future content for The Elder Scrolls: Legends. From the moment we were given the privilege to work on the game we have been nothing short of obsessed with making it the best it possibly could be. Completely rebuilding a pre-existing title from scratch under deadline with a new client, game server, and backend was no easy feat, with every system, gameplay nuance, animation, and visual effect having to be recreated. The result was a mad dash to initial release that was decidedly rough, but we, along with Bethesda, loved the game, wanted it to continue, and had been working heads down on a shared vision we hoped to bring to all Legends players.

Over these last 18 months the connection we experienced from the Legends community has been wonderfully uplifting. You supported us through every release and some significant bumps in the road. You challenged us when we missed the mark and that helped us to learn and grow. Nothing was more enjoyable than seeing your excitement from each expansion, feature addition, and requested quality of life change. You put a smile on our collective face every time with your kind words and passion. Truly we couldn't have asked for a better fan base. We love you.

Moving forward it is up to Bethesda to decide the shape of ongoing support for Legends. Most questions should now be directed to CVH or Customer Service. As far as the Asian version goes, while it is being built on our reworked version of Legends we've not been directly involved beyond the very occasional consultation. But we're excited to see where they take it! With that said, please know that we are still around. Some of us have moved on to other endeavors, but a core of us are still here, always open to a quick chat. <3

Thank you again from the bottom of our hearts and to Bethesda for being a great partner. It's been a heck of a time.

All the best,

The Sparkypants Team

 

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Comments

  • AnonymousUser's Avatar
    Quote From Almaniarra

    I have joined so many streams in preview times of Legends of Runeterra in twitch. Most of them were people who didn't ever played card games and started to be interested in just because of it is League of Legends' card game and people who were in chat were also like that. The amount was really so high. So I suggest people to not underestimate the power of the fan-bases.

    Riot wants to do what Blizzard did with Hearthstone. Let's see they will be able to or not.

    I'm looking forward to this as the game releases. So far, I noticed that most of the streamers were actually LoL players with a solid fanbase. The good part is that a good amount of them got actually hooked, and in that regard, it feels pretty healthy for the future of the game: it is comforting knowing it will start with a good amount of hype and visibility. I don't think this game will ever dethrone HS, but Riot is no joke, and with their f2p friendly approach, and MOST OF ALL the reactivity of the development team, the success (I hope) should be there. This game ain't artifact: HS has a real contender this time. 

    • AnonymousUser's Avatar

      Yeah, I agree completely. People always consider relations between games as stealing their playerbase. I can understand that concern when it is based upon time/money as a spending source but situation here a little bit more complex than that.

      It is like openning a gym in a city which doesn't have any and this gym has serving and promising more services than the gym in nearest city. It will at least gain an amount of customers from its city and if it will be more succesful than its competitor, it may gather more customers from neighbour city too.

      The best example of this is my homeland. Hearthstone is popular ok but so much people (It is millions of people) doesn't play Hearthstone just because They don't know english very well and those people are playing games actively and wanted to play Hearthstone once but couldn't afford it just because they don't know a language. So Hearthstone isn't a real competitor in this country, especially on younger people. I will leave here a comment of mine why this is like that;

      Show Spoiler
      Quote From Almaniarra
      Show Spoiler
      Quote From meisterz39
      Quote From Karfhud
      Quote From Xarkkal

      Artifact was supposed to be the death of HS

      GWENT was supposed to be the death of HS

      Magic Arena was supposed to be the death of HS

       

      I honestly hope LoR is successful just because it will force Blizzard to put more effort into some of the major issues with HS. They have improved greatly in 2019, but there is still plenty of issues that still need addressing. Competition is good,  but I'm not going to keep my hopes up, because we've been down this road before. 

      This. Many card games can easylie coexist, so I hope LoR will be a great game with solid fan base. I also want try how LoR so for now it's ok, but easthetic still bother me so far (also I never played LoL). What I can is for sure it's a game that is not boring to watch, and it's also important for it's potencially success.

      You're right that many games can easily coexist, and that it's silly to proclaim every new digital CCG "the Hearthstone killer," but I think you may be a bit too rosy in your outlook on coexistence today. The facts remain that Hearthstone is the 500lb gorilla in the room when it comes to marketshare:

      The same SuperData report that this comes from says that the overall audience size for digital CCGs is leveling out, and that a large majority of players want access on their smartphones. HS's biggest competition - MTGA - will probably never make it to mobile because the game is too complex and the board size has no limits to make rendering straight-forward. Other games like Gwent are getting into mobile, but they're just not popular enough to make a dent.

      These factors, combined with the inertia of players' sunk cost in Hearthstone, makes it a juggernaut, and for someone to get into the digital CCG space, they need to take shots at Hearthstone's marketshare. That would be great, and that's why people are looking for the "Hearthstone killer." If Blizzard takes a big hit in their profits, perhaps they'll make a serious investment in Hearthstone improvements. How long have they talked about tournament modes? How long have people been calling for rotating standard sets or greater investment into the Wild format to make old cards less worthless?

      Runeterra may not be a "Hearthstone killer," but from my first impressions, I think it's well-poised to deal the major hit to Hearthstone that Blizzard needs if they're ever gong to take major steps to improve the game. In particular:

      • Runeterra offers a "safe" F2P switch. Between the sunk cost into Hearthstone and the knowledge that switching to something like MTGA will also require massive time/monetary investment to be competitively viable, most players would prefer not to switch. Runeterra gate-limits buying cards, offers focused ways to get cards from specific regions, and only uses wildcards so that people can more easily get exactly what they want, so the risk of grinding for what you want is lower. (I believe this is a big part of why most other CCGs have failed to gain traction - they use the same basic monetizing model as Hearthstone/MTG/etc., and no one wants to sink that much money/time in twice).
      • Runeterra is mobile-first. This is going to make it a lot easier for casual players to pick up and try on the go, where a game like MTGA or Artifact was always going to require players to set aside time to game at home.
      • Runeterra will probably appeal to the Hearthstone players who want a more complex strategy game as their main CCG, but don't want to play a game like MTGA that's saddled with poor mechanics that stem from age/being a non-native to digital spaces (e.g. having to draw land cards is painful after you've played Hearthstone, and mana screw is super tilting)
      • Riot Games has said they'll be willing to make balance patches as frequently as once a month if needed, whereas Blizzard has been extremely slow to do any balance fixes.

      Nothing is going to kill Hearthstone (which is a good thing), but it doesn't have enough real competition, and Runeterra looks poised to be a major competitor in this space.


      There are another reasons why Runeterra might probably succeed more than other dccg's. It is language support.


      For example, Here in Turkey, Some people don't know English. Especially younger people who studies in colleges. They want to play Hearthstone for example but most of them don't decide to play because of the language part. They don't know English so they can't play it effectively.

      Riot brought League of Legends in Turkish to Turkey, They opened Turkish Server. With Legends of Runeterra's reveal, They announced that LoR will also be playable in Turkish, They posted a video about voiceovers with anouncement. That excited people, especially the people who couldn't play Hearthstone or other card games because of language skills.

      There is not a little gaming community here. If you go check out, There is always a Turkish streamer in LoL channel at top 5. There is a potential and Riot saw that.

      There was even a petition about translating Hearthstone to Turkish here. Blizzard refused it.

      %70 of our people are young and at best, %90 of them are playing computer games and I know that Riot is doing same thing for another countries which can't get language support for best games around.

      For being another example how a gaming company should act, When Witcher 3 published, There was no Turkish translation and They had no Turkish translator in their team. After the launch, some people here voluntarily translated the game and contacted with CD Projekt Red. Cd Projekt Red agreed the translation and added it to original copy. Now, one of the most loved game is Witcher 3 and company is CD Projekt Red here. And for being answer, Most of people here bought original copy of Witcher 3 even it is a single game. (people here rarely buy original games, especially single games, They started to buy tho.) Now,  some people don't even like sci-fi games, They all are waiting for Cyberpunk because they are expecting same support.

      Like the example here, The people who rarely buy games can spend their money to cosmetics in LoL and they are really spending much. not even for themselves, They are also gifting each other so much. That seems so weird at first look, but if you go deeper you can understand that. They feel important when a company listens them and give support to them.

      Playing a game in your main language might be normal for French, German, English, Russian , Chinese or Japanese people but not for people here and I believe there are other nations like us. They become excited when they hear about a game is publishing in Turkish. I remember how all people here loved Crysis for being fully Turkish. Even people here loved Age of Empires II because of there are some Turkish words although they are not even close to Turkish. They were just words which an unnative person's wrong pronounciation of Turkish words. They are still meme here tho. :D (Well, it is not valid for me and people like me because I had an uncle who is an English teacher and I grown up with his computer and games. Even the games are in my main language, I always prefer English because I've been used to it like that and I can't really understand some gaming terms when they translated to my main language.)

      So, Runeterra will probably succeed. Not just because of being a good game but because of this kind of policy and support. Well, I've tried it and game also seems great.

      Language support shouldn't be underestimated. Some people around world (especially in my country) asks for it before they asks the game's system requirements when they hear a new game release . So much games have been successful here just because of the language support even they didn''t succeed worldwide.

      Also like you said, Riot's f2p approach is real. I have said this in a different thread/article here; Riot tries to keep their customers happy because there is a fact in trade; If you make your customers happy, they feel more comfortable to buy and buy more. They are trying to keep us happy with f2p friendly content and hoping that we will buy cosmetics to support them. It is how League of Legends have been succeeded in years and ofc other political/worldwide policies of them. People here (especially younger ones again) buying League of Legends cosmetics and gifting each other even with their phone credits because they are happy to play the game in their main language and they can reach game's content fully without paying anything. It was the first game that you can see in mainstream media and it was supported/advertised very well by Riot. It was also first server that a game company opens here.

      So I also think that It won't kill Hearthstone but will stay strong, at least stronger than any other card game except Magic The Gathering. That game has their own fan-base and it is not just a fan-base, it is like a cult mostly. Hearthstone either didn't steal from MTG's fanbase. It just bring other players to the Gamemarket as i said in my above posts.

      So In years, There will be 3 main cardgames in the market. HS, MTG and LoR. This is what it seems like because of the valid reasons on society.

  • AnonymousUser's Avatar

    wow, thats a really on point sociological/marketing view of the subject. never thought of it like that. wish i could upvote it twice

  • AnonymousUser's Avatar

    Damn, I have been updated the game 1 week ago and started to play again. Was a fun game for me since i'm fans of card games and elder scrolls series both.

    That's really sad news, at least for me but at least they didn't close servers at all that we can still go that tavern and fiddle around.

  • AnonymousUser's Avatar

    Bethesda's bleedin so bad due to Fallout76 they are cancelling other games and services now? oof...that sucks.

  • AnonymousUser's Avatar

    Unfortunate to hear. I was never a big fan of the game, tried it for a couple of days, didn't see any appeal in it. But there are surely people that enjoyed it, and played it on the regular. Clearly not that many, but surely more than Artifact. It's sad when an ongoing service - especially a card game - receives this treatment. Let's be grateful the servers are still running for the foreseeable future, allowing players to still have fun with the game for a while and go back to it whenever they feel like it.  

    Still, sad news

    • AnonymousUser's Avatar
      Quote From DrGoodie

      But there are surely people that enjoyed it, and played it on the regular. Clearly not that many, but surely more than Artifact.

      So at least 1 person, then? Kidding - though you're very correct: big F for all the people for whom this was one of their regular/favorite games.

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