As an emerging sport, esports will make the first appearance as the official competition event of Hangzhou Asian Games.

Hearthstone is an esports event that is produced by Blizzard Entertainment (USA) and operated by NetEase (China) in the region of China. Due to the expiration of commercial cooperation, both parties fail to reach the agreement on the renewal of the contract. As a result, the operation team and server are in a terminated state, and the preconditions for inclusion in esports of Hangzhou Asian Games are not satisfied.

On March 16, the decision to remove Hearthstone from Hangzhou Asian Games was made at the Fifth Meeting of the OCA Coordinating committee. At Hangzhou Asian Games, esports involves seven competition events, such as League of Legends, Arena of Valor Asian Games Version, Game for Peace Asian Games Version, Dota, Three Kingdoms 2, Street Fighter 5, and FIFA Online 4.