Heroes of the Storm Release Date: June 2 Launch Set; Game Free to Download on PC

"Heroes of the Storm," the new multiplayer online battle arena, or MOBA, game from Blizzard, is set for release on June 2 and will be free to download and play on PC.

Before the game comes out on June 2, it will go through an open beta period which will kick off on May 19. This follows a closed beta held earlier which saw more than 9 million people participating.

Before the open beta launches, a "Heroes of the Dorm" collegiate tournament will be held pitting students from over 400 schools in the U.S. The championship match will be held in the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles. The winner will get about $450,000 in tuition fees and other prizes.

The characters featured in the game have been sourced from a number of Blizzard-owned games such as "Diablo," "StarCraft" and even the "Warcraft" series. When the game launches in June, it will come with 30 characters, maps for seven different playable areas and mounts.

As usual the characters in the game can be customized with a number of skins. A massive advantage that the game has is that it will allow gamers to pit characters from other games owned by Blizzard against one another to find out which one will win.

Even though the game is free to download and play, Blizzard is set to make money of it as it will charge players for new characters and for customizations.

In 2012 Blizzard first announced that it was working on the game and it was named 'Blizzard DotA. It subsequently took on Valve in a legal battle for the name. After that, the name was switched to "Blizzard All-Stars" and finally "Heroes of the Storm."