Dota 2, League of Legends, and a few others may still be able to draw an audience, but the heyday of the MOBA has passed. What we cannot avoid now is battle royale; the downfall of the MOBA was Epic's Paragon, but from its carcass have sprung several projects, each using official assets.

To blame Paragon's failure on the genre's general decline is to forget that the game was struggling before Fortnite came along. But it was the arrival of Fortnite that sealed its fate, and development slowed as the popularity of battle royale skyrocketed; in April 2018, it was shut down for good.

However, there was some good that came from Paragon's demise. All of the high-quality assets were released to the Unreal Engine 4 marketplace for free. And while Epic may not have considered Paragon's user base to be large enough, several developers are betting that it still has fans by adding their own unique flavor to the MOBA.

At least four MOBAs-Overprime, CORE, Predecessor, and Fault-are in the works based on Paragon, each using official assets and putting a slightly different spin on the formula; Fault appears to be the most advanced in development and will be released on July It will appear on Steam Early Access on July 17. A full-fledged release is expected next year. Achieving milestones during a match will earn you favor with your chosen faction and give you access to legendary items.

Predecessor will also be playable soon, but only for those who were able to participate in the closed alpha. That will take place this week, July 10, and while Paragon featured some 40 characters, the alpha version of Predecessor will only test nine characters, including Feng Mao, Gadget, Muriel, Murdock, and Sevarog. Their names and roles seem to be intact. If you want to try it out, sign up for the alpha now.

All of these successors are being developed by much smaller teams than Paragon, which according to Epic has $12 million worth of assets but no resources available to a large developer like Epic. Nevertheless, they don't need such a large player base to survive, with four developers competing for the same small piece of the pie.

With fewer new MOBAs coming out, there may be many who are eager for something like this, but not enough to support all four companies. However, there may be many who want something like this.

If so, it will be a fight to the death. Those who want to play Paragon more can start thinking immediately about which game to support.