MTG players unsurprised as forgotten Hearthstone rival is shuttered

Magic Spellslingers has been shuttered after just a year and a half, as the franchise’s video game efforts continue to flounder.

With no fanfare, another Magic: The Gathering video game has been shuttered. Continuing the trend for the franchise, Magic Spellslingers is another notch in the belt for failed games based on MTG.

The game was a direct competitor to Hearthstone and its ilk, slim-lining down the game’s extensive rules into a mobile title. Wizards of the Coast already has two running online versions of the card game, Online, and Arena, which don’t trim any of the fat.

In an announcement, Spellslingers’ development team announced that the game would be closing on June 4, 2024 at 12pm PST.

MTG fans didn’t even know about Spellslingers

Those reacting to the news seem unsurprised, or unphased by it. A common consensus appears to be that not only did most of MTG’s player base have no idea about the game:

“Crazy I spend an obscene amount of time on MTG-related content, and this is the first time I have heard of this game.”

Another user, with no responses after about an hour, added:

“Never heard of it, was the game any good?”

The other stinging criticism is aimed at Wizards, who some users claimed provided no support. It appears the game was released and left to flounder:

“Sadly this is another example of a company making a spinoff to cater to a particular audience but not advertising or supporting the game at all.

“I felt the art of the leaders was strange but the cards and gameplay were cool. C’est la vie.”

The top comment was a little more pointed:

“There’s most likely a good corporate fuckup story to be told here… How this thing was basically launched dead with zero support or hope for it since day one.”

Looking at the official YouTube channel, it has only its trailer and under 600 subscribers. There’s no gameplay included in the trailer, outside the last few seconds.

Magic Spellslingers players react as game is scrapped

However, a couple of users did mention that they played it:

“I played Spellslingers a little and it was fine. The Planeswalker-specific abilities felt too impactful, but that may be a factor of starting with lower power cards.”

One person argued that it was fighting Arena for time:

“It was fun in a way that Arena should have been, but it battled for the same game time and space and people would just rather play Arena.”

Prior to this, Magic Legends, an action RPG in the vein of Diablo, was scrapped before it left beta. A MOBA was also canned after it failed to take off.