Heroes of the Storm is a crossover multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment and released on June 2, 2015, for Microsoft Windows and macOS.1,2 The game features various characters from Blizzard’s franchises as playable heroes, as well as different battlegrounds based on Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, and Over watch universes.
The game is free-to-play, based on freemium business model, and is supported by microtransactions which can be used to purchase heroes, visual alterations for the heroes in the game, mounts, and other cosmetic elements.3,4 Blizzard does not call the game a “multiplayer online battle arena” or an “action real-time strategy” because they feel it is something different with a broader playstyle they refer to it as an online “hero brawler”.5