Remember when Overwatch came out, and then the next few years saw a glut of hero shooters that followed in its wake? And then remember how almost all of those games died away without a trace? LawBreakers, Battleborn, Gigantic, The Amazing Eternals - remember those?
The hero shooter is a member of an unfortunate trend - a genre that only ever really supported a tiny handful of games, and that claimed the lives of far too many projects that came afterwards. After Valve all-but moved on from Team Fortress 2, Overwatch and Paladins were two of the only games to genuinely thrive in this specific genre space, with the latter likely succeeding in no small part because it was a free alternative to Overwatch. Since then, the likes of Apex Legends and Valorant have taken some of the hero shooters' ideas forward, but since Overwatch's gradual obsolescence and the fumbled landing of Overwatch 2, the genre has shrunk into relative decline.
