The Asian Electronic Sports Federation (AESF) recently announced that Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will no longer be featured at the upcoming Asian Games 2023.
About Asian Games 2023
The upcoming latest edition of the Asian Games, to be held in Hangzhou from September 23 to October 8, 2023, will be the first Asian Games to debut Esports as a proper competitive sport medal event.
The Asian Games 2022, originally scheduled for September last year was delayed for an year due to Covid.
Esports at Hangzhou Asian Games 2023
This will be the first Asian Games to have Esports as a proper medal event. Officially, there were eight games at the event, but with the removal of Hearthstone, there will be seven. Here is the list of games that be played for at the Asian Games 2023
- Arena of Valor
- Dota 2
- Dream Three Kingdoms 2
- FIFA 23
- League of Legends
- PUBG
- Street Fighter V
Removal of Hearthstone form the Asian Games 2023 Roster
AESF did not state any specific reason on why Hearthstone was removed from the list of games to be competed for at Asian Games 2023. We suspect it could be due to nature of the game, especially after its endless expansion packs, that could cause imbalance and overpower certain strategies with specific cards. No one really knows the real reason why the game was removed, but it is certainly a bummer that we won’t get to see players battling it out in Hearthstone, which is a super exciting game and has been consistently featured on our Best-Of lists.
Regardless of its exclusion at Asian Games 2023, Hearthstone is still widely featured in other esports competitions worldwide.
India’s Esports Contingent at Asian Games 2023
Indian esports athletes pushed the government for recognition ahead of the delayed Asian Games 2022. Numerous companies are training esports teams to qualify for Asian Games 2023. India also performed really well at the Commonwealth Esports Championship 2022. So we are rooting for a big Indian delegation of take part in the Esports category at the Asian Games 2023.
