$59.99 Signature cards. $19.99 for Hero rerolls in Battlegrounds. Hearthstone’s monetization has entered a new era. How have we ended up here, and how bad is it? In this article, I’ll take a deeper look at how Hearthstone makes money, what it means for players, and what we can expect from the game in the future.
The Collectible Card Game Market – Everyone Wants a Piece, But Servings Are Limited
Hearthstone was the first major digital collectible card game for mobile. There were PC clients for major physical card games like Magic: The Gathering (2002) and Pókemon Trading Card Game (2011) before Hearthstone arrived in 2014, but Hearthstone is the game that exploded collectible card games into the mobile market. Before mobile games refined their monetization practices, collectible card games were at the top of the food chain when it came to player spending. Now that a single player can spend $100,000 on Diablo Immortal or Rise of Kingdoms or one of many other mobile games, the card game market does not look quite as lucrative anymore, but it is still a huge business. After all, Magic: The Gathering has made more than $1 billion per year lately.
Hearthstone was an immediate success, and earned around $200 million per year in revenue from mobile stores alone in its early years. When Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard, Hearthstone was named as one of Blizzard’s over $1 billion lifetime earnings franchises.
Seeing how Magic, Hearthstone, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh were printing money with card games, many new players wanted to enter the market. There were major corporations and indie games. We had games like Gwent, The Elder Scrolls Legends, Legends of Runeterra, Duelyst, Faeria, Cards and Castles… The list is endless. Some have lived on as niche games, whereas others failed altogether.
One defining feature of the collectible card game market is that switching costs are steep. When you have built a large collection in one game, it is difficult to abandon it and move on to another game. The launch of a new game presents the best opportunity to switch, as you are not at an immediate disadvantage against established players. But new games can fail, and often do fail, in which case you need to either find another new game or return to your old one at an increased cost.
That said, players will inevitably grow tired of a game, any game. They will try something else, and if it is too hard to return to the old game, they just won’t. Hearthstone responded to this reality with returning player decks and Catchup Packs. You can take a break and still have an opportunity to come back later, even though these measures only alleviate some of the worst issues in trying to come back.
Over the past couple of years, Hearthstone has faced difficulties from a pair of strong competitors and from Blizzard’s actions. Marvel managed to lure Ben Brode away from Blizzard with a deal to create a new Marvel-themed card game, which became Marvel Snap (2022). Marvel Snap is an even faster game than Hearthstone, as is the brand-new Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket (2024). New games with strong IPs are an attractive place to switch to, as they are more likely to stay on the market than your average game. Blizzard also left the Chinese market in 2023, and China was Hearthstone’s largest individual market area that contributed up to a quarter of the game’s revenues. All of this has added pressure to monetize Hearthstone more aggressively.
Battlegrounds – The Accidental Success
But what is Hearthstone, anyway? Obviously, the game started as a collectible card game, but for a while it looked like it could become something else entirely. In 2019, Hearthstone launched an auto-battler game mode that took its inspiration from Dota Auto Chess and Teamfight Tactics. You play with familiar Hearthstone characters, and the game board looks like Hearthstone. However, the game is not in the same genre as traditional Hearthstone at all, it is an auto battler. It is a good game though, and a popular one, too.
The success of Battlegrounds has been a constant problem for Blizzard. They made it as a fun side mode, and paid no attention to monetizing it. Then, they had a lot of people playing Battlegrounds in the Hearthstone client, and not paying for cards. That’s a problem because no matter how altruistic you are, you need people to have some way to pay for your game, especially one that is running online and requires servers.
For many years, Blizzard attempted to monetize Battlegrounds with cosmetics. Hero skins, bartenders, emotes, strikes… Unfortunately for Blizzard, it did not work. None of the cosmetics they made for Battlegrounds moved the needle enough compared to what the constructed game mode was capable of.
Eventually, Blizzard decided to start selling power. In 2022, access to Battlegrounds Perks – the ability to choose from four different Heroes each game instead of two – became a paid-only feature. There were some complaints, but life carried on. Now, in 2024, Blizzard is introducing Hero rerolls: you can pay to be able to reroll your Hero, up to four times per game. As some Heroes are stronger than others, having a larger pool to choose from gives players an advantage in the long term. In an individual game, the best Heroes may still end up in the hands of F2P players, but the paid players can just weigh the die a little in their favor. With Hero rerolls, paying more can weigh the die a little more in your favor again.
What About Cosmetics?
I think one of the lessons Blizzard learned from Battlegrounds is that monetizing through cosmetics only is hard. Another lesson they may have been learning over the years is that while there is a limited number of people interested in cosmetics, many of those who are, are willing to pay a lot for them. And this is where the $59.99 Signature card bundles enter the stage.
With increased competition and slowly decreasing player numbers, pack sales alone cannot keep up the revenue levels Hearthstone is used to. More aggressive monetization of Battlegrounds is one avenue the team is exploring, higher-priced cosmetics is another, and reduction of free rewards is the final one.
Where Did Our Rewards Go?
Blizzard has made many small changes that reduce player income in Hearthstone over the past year.
The Legendary collection achievement used to give you a Diamond Legendary card. This achievement is awarded when you have as many Legendary cards from a set as there were in it originally, before the mini-set. For medium spenders, this was effectively a free Legendary card, not a cosmetic. They reached the goal when the mini-set arrived and they were still missing some Legendary cards at that point. Rerolling the regular card that the Diamond replaced gave them a new Legendary card from the same set. Blizzard replaced the Legendary with lower-value cards, making this a cosmetic-only reward.
Blizzard has also been tweaking the Weekly quests. First, they tried to make them three times as difficult to complete for a minor increase in rewards. After huge backlash, they backed down to a mix of decrease or a minor increase in effort and a minor increase in rewards. Now, they reverted all the changes. Lower rewards again for the old level of effort. An especially painful change was the return to 5 wins instead of 10 games played: over the entire player pool, these are equivalent because the average win rate is always 50%, but the 10 games played allowed you to play for fun instead of playing to win and still complete your weekly quest. This whole endeavor was a disaster: Hearthstone lost players when the first, completely intolerable, changes were made. Those players will not come back easily. Now, the developers managed to upset the remaining players who had gotten used to the new weekly quest rhythm, and enjoyed some of the good aspects of it.
Recently, Blizzard changed the pack you get from the weekly Tavern Brawl to a pack from the latest expansion instead of a Standard Pack. Many player held on to their Standard Packs and opened them at the launch of a new expansion because old Standard Packs can give you new cards, depending on when you open them. Getting expansion packs instead prevents players from saving resources for a new expansion launch, and makes it more important to spend money early in a new expansion to be able to play a variety of decks.
Blizzard has also cracked down on AFK farming by reducing or removing XP gained while inactive in all game modes, and especially from playing Hearthstone Mercenaries. While this reduces botting, it also removes some XP from legitimate players who play the game in a normal way.
All of these changes may be individually small, but over the entire player base, they reduce the available free resources significantly, and entice players to spend money on new expansions.
The Return to China Can Change Everything, Or Can It?
After the breakdown of the partnership between Blizzard and NetEase, Hearthstone left the Chinese market in January 2023. The partnership was subsequently renewed, and Hearthstone re-entered the Chinese market on September 25, 2024. And what a re-entry it has been! According to NetEase, Hearthstone has 150% more daily active users in China now than it did in 2022. Finding revenue numbers from China is difficult, but Hearthstone’s return looks like a major success. Sensor Tower reports that Hearthstone earned $19 million on iOS alone in its first 35 days, and GameLook estimates that Hearthstone has earned more than $100 million after its return to China across all platforms.
If the Hearthstone team has been under pressure to generate profits, the return to China has provided abundant profits. Revenues are higher than they were before Hearthstone left, but we don’t have visibility into what is generating those revenues. Existential pressure is most likely gone, but if the new monetization practices are highly successful in China, there is no reason for Blizzard to go back to lower prices.
What Will Happen Next?
It is clear that Hearthstone has been monetized more aggressively recently. The pressure on the team has been clear. The competition is harder. The loss of the Chinese market was a huge blow for Hearthstone in particular.
Now, the Chinese market is back, and that should help the game. It is unlikely for Blizzard to return to their previous monetization practices: when someone gives you money, you are not going to say no. That said, there’s only so much you can do by monetizing your game. You need players, committed players. There are two trends in the collectible card game market right now that Blizzard could follow: franchise crossovers and fast-paced games.
Magic has done a lot of franchise crossovers, from The Lord of the Rings to SpongeBob SquarePants. Blizzard is already pushing a StarCraft mini-set for Hearthstone! Oh my. Following the trend, or at least testing the waters with a safe crossover with one of their own IPs. As part of Microsoft, their “own IPs” are many, by the way, if we take a wider perspective.
Fast-paced games is another such trend. Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket are both simplified versions of the original games, and ones that are run alongside the original games instead of replacing them. This provides the players a more casual experience or a more hardcore experience, depending on their choice. This is an avenue I could totally see Blizzard pursue in the future. I’m sure they will still be happy to grab any loose money nearby, but they cannot continue sharpening up their monetization alone indefinitely. With the return to the Chinese market, there should be some room for Hearthstone to innovate again. Perhaps expecting such innovation is too optimistic, but that’s what I am rooting for, anyway.
imho the introduction of the “caverns of time” set was also a failed attempt at monetarization, specifically targeting players that try to complete a collection. These collectors now have to get all those “reprinted” cards that they already own a second time – because owning the “cavern of times”-version of a card does not count as owning the original version.