Heroes of Newerth is under new ownership

Long-running free-to-play MOBA Heroes of Newerth has been acquired from original developer S2 Games by Garena, the Singapore-based online services company that's been operating the game in Southeast Asia for years.

Garena has also acquired the entire Kalamazoo-based HoN development team, and intends to keep them working on the project in the same city under a new name: Frostburn Studios.

According to a HoN forum post from the new studio's chief, this working arrangement has been in place since last summer and is only now being made public. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

It's not clear what this means for S2 Games; the company still operates its second F2P MOBA Strife, which is currently available via Steam's Early Access service. Gamasutra has reached out to S2 representatives for further comment on the deal.

It may be hard to remember, but when Heroes of Newerth launched back in 2010 (as a premium game, no less) the field of MOBA design was relatively untouched; S2 chief Marc DeForest posited that "until LoL and HoN, DotA was just a mod," while speaking to Gamasutra in 2011.