As many Hearthstone players are aware, the game is available on the desktop and on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This makes it incredibly convenient to play the game, something which we’re sure Blizzard was aiming for. However as it turns out, the mobile version of Hearthstone could have lost money for Blizzard.
This is according to a report from Gamasutra who has estimated that about half of Hearthstone’s desktop players have since migrated to mobile, but why is that a bad thing? As you might know, both Apple and Google take a cut from app sales and in-app purchases – 30% to be exact.
This means that any in-app purchases, such as booster packs, will see 30% of those sales go to Apple or Google, versus the desktop version in which 100% of the sales will go back to Blizzard. In fact many companies aren’t too happy about this and have found ways around it, such as Amazon’s comiXology and Spotify where subscriptions and purchases can only be made through its respective websites.
Also last we heard, Hearthstone is said to be pulling in $20 million a month in revenue so we have to wonder how much more Blizzard could have made if there was no 30% cut. We doubt Blizzard will ever decide to abandon mobile since it is a very lucrative industry, but if this keeps up we can only imagine Blizzard will want to circumvent the app store for in-app purchases as well.
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