Why heartstone became too expensive

Recently, many Hearthstone players have been complaining about the rising costs of the game. With each new update, these are becoming more and more insurmountable. One of the main reasons for this is that Blizzard Entertainment has introduced many new cards to the game, which has resulted in players having to buy more and more card packs in order to acquire the required cards and remain competitive.

Unfortunately, the price of card packs is insurmountable for many players, which discourages them from continuing to play. Many feel that Blizzard is exaggerating the cost and doing little to improve the situation. Furthermore, some of the new cards are so powerful that they are practically required to compete at higher levels of the game. This forces players to buy even more packs to get these cards.

Many players find this discourages them from playing, and some have already abandoned the game. This ultimately leads to dwindling player numbers, which could spell trouble for the game in the future. Blizzard should realise this problem and do what it can to make the game more accessible to all players, not just those who are prepared to spend

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Unfortunately blizzard’s policy for prices is the same as undyne’s policy on oven knobs: they can only ever go in one direction.

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That’s right this game requires $1000 for each expansion and even then you won’t have all the cards!!! Activision-Bli$$ard :money_mouth_face:

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They are trying to milk the current playerbase because no new players are coming in.

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didnt this price increase happen because of chinesse players using vpn ?

It increased because China kick Blizzard out. They used VPN as an excuse to make up for the lost revenue.

have always buy for argentina gere is cheap

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I thought they were scaling back local pricing since many players currency hop for giant discounts?

It certainly is a thing that happens with regional pricing of digital goods. You’d think that actually having customers in places where the game would otherwise be too expensive to play would make up for that, but I’m sure the number-crunchers spent a lot of time figuring that out.

Personally, I’d interpret a lot of people jumping through hoops like that to mean the game is too expensive for the average player, but what do I know about how to milk cash from an audience?

The #1 factor is simple, Blizzard is a business and hearthstone is one of their products that generates revenue. The main objective of a business is to generate revenue that comps previous years revenue to generates a profit.

I"m not sure what a typical life cycle of a game would be. I tried to search for it, however, I would probably say a good game would have a life cycle anywhere between 5-7 years. And Hearthstone is 10 years old. They are the #1 Digital card game.

I looked over their financial statements in their quarterly press releases, they don’t specifically mention Hearthstone in either of them, however, the revenues for Hearthstone can be approximately figured out by deducting the revenues from The overwatch, wow, and Diablo totals found in the press release from the net income under the Blizzard division on their Income statement. However, it’s won’t be 100% accurate because you have other things like Hero’s of the storm, starcraft which still do generate sales, but how much is anyone’s guess.

My point is Blizzard as a whole, Blizzard is making a decent profit on their products, and until the day comes when those profits start to significantly dwindle, prices will remain as they are and they will continue to find creative ways to increase prices to drive revenue.

For example. If you are a mobile player… Don’t buy anything from the shop on your mobile device, do yourself a favour and log into your account via a computer because you’re charged $10 more for expansions and $12 more for the mini-set it you buy through your mobile.

Blizzard has a very steady number of montly players that continue to remain active, month after month. Those are the players that blizzard targets. They know how to drive sales, whether it’s through matchmaking, Dimond cards to drive pack sales for past expansions, Bg seasonal pass, and those collector die hards that will spend money on packs to collect what seem to be epic New Signatures cards in the next expansion.

Hearthstone is sill making bank. and their player base has consistently remained solid month after month.

There will always be players who will leave the game for various reasons, as life circumstance change, it’s expected. Consumers are price sensitive, however, if your finding ways to provide value that is used to justify increases, and that your loyal customers are still willing to pay, than prices will stay the same. Blizzard also made the game more expensive when they added Death Knights, because now there 2 additional legendary cards you need to obtain in order to complete a set. They did a really good job with that class, so as a loyal hearthstone customer, do I like the idea that It will take more to get the entire set, no, but is the value there for me to overlook it? Yes.

So yeah, sorry friend, the reality is you’re most likely not the target market. I’m not saying that to be mean, it’s all comes down to business and knowing who your target market is, and doing what you can to retain their business.

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That’s not 100% accurate. The last quarterly numbers that I saw had a significant increase in active players from the previous two quarters.

OMG this made me laugh. Very witty, I like it.

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I will not agree here because look at the ratings for mobile devices and you will understand what is going on

They did,

note the spot rate for US to AUS is 1.492, the bundle Is 1.5 x US Price in Aus. I have no complaint about that, I suspect in previous years they would have added $5 AUS to round to nearest $10.

Correlation does not imply causation. They may have been jumping through hoops to put it to the man(blizzard)

What do you not agree with, the life cycle of a game, or the fact that Hearthstone is the #1 Digital card game?

Hearthstone is larger than MTG on the Digital Platform, however, MTG with their digital plaform and actual trading card platform they are larger than Hearthstone. Hearthstone is also the #1 most watched card game on twitch. Sure there might be a lot of bad reviews, but there’s a lot of really salty players. This game is not for everyone.

And trust me, before I wrote this post I made sure I did my homework to be able to back up the figures and statements that I included in my post.

I’d be more than happy to provide you with the Link to Blizzard Entertainment financial press releases and their Financial statement that include up to Q4 2022. It is also linked to the article that discusses the fact that they are the #1 Digtal card game. Now, just because it states that they are the #1, it’s not reflective to overall satisfaction, but rather an aggregate amount of registered players along with the amount of active monthly players.

Hearthstone has been around for a while and it was in a field of it’s own when it was launched. It is only natural that their market share will decrease as time goes on, but with almost an average of 25 Million active players per month, that’s very sold.

But then if you take a look at Marvel Snap, they have a very positive response from players regarding the overall experience of the game. I think the Steam stats stated they have either an 81% or 86% overall satisfaction, I can’t remember which one is accurate but it’s one of the two.

SO from a satisfaction standpoint, that is something Blizzard needs to be keeping an eye on. However, with that being said, Marvel has only a total of 14 Million downloads by Q4 of 2022. Hearthstone still has 100 Million registered users.

SO while marvel may be more fun and what not, one needs to be mindfully to the entry barriers for new players. YOu would need to still make an investment into the game like many have already done with hearthstone, some don’t mind, some do. However, that’s life in the world of business and competition .

HS is not expensive, you can literally buy one expansion and after that you can just roll on quests forever…

HS is not expensive, HS is braindead sh@t fest.

Most expensive game I have ever played, thats for damn sure. That said I wasnt VPN hoping to buy in cheap. No other game has had this type of investment required to remain in a relevant position with expac releases.

180 - 240 a year just for 1 expac bundle from new expacs. That doesnt even give you all the cards. Doesnt pay for tavern pass. Doesnt include arena passes or bg perks. Even 1 expac a year x 7 yrs is 350 - 420 invested. Multiply that by 3 expacs a year youre at 1050-1250 invested if you started when game released.

Long story short math is power and this game is way too expensive.

Well it’s one reason they divided Standard and Wild lowering the cost to hundreds instead of thousands.

Everyone keeps harping on spending so much on the game, buying packs to get your desired cards.
I am afraid I have to disagree with all your arguments so far.

I am a ftp player, I have been playing hearthstone for 3years and I have NOT spent a single penny at all buying packs. I believe It’s a total waste of money imo.

Without buying packs with real money, I can still accumulate >10000 dusts in my account and I have the luxury to create any cards I desire anytime with the amount of dust I have. You know how I do it.? Simply complete the daily and weekly quest diligently and run mercenary match afk as often as I could……wala……I get huge amount of free gold at the end of the season to buy hundreds of packs for the new expansion and with that I accumulate my dust.

I have been hitting legend for so many months and I am proud to say I am a 100% ftp player. Zero penny spent on this game. So hearthstone is very very cheap game, in fact , a FREE game. So I don’t know why people are spending as much ……why buy packs just to get your desired cards?? Just use dust to create them
My few cents worth………

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But standard costs much more than wild…

I gave up playing standard, the meta keeps changing every couple of weeks, so you need to spend more dust crafting cards, not cost effective at all……that is how blizzard earns money. To accumulate large amount of dust, I play wild , because wild meta is pretty consistent, craft a good tier 1 deck and it can me a few months . Like even shaman, I have been playing it for god knows how many months and it gets me to legend every month, although not high legend.

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I am starting to play classic as well……the meta is permanently stagnant