While Hearthstone is definitely not the first of its kind as far as digital card games are concerned, it is probably one of the more successful ones around, which in turn has led to other developers creating games that are similar in nature. However according to research firm Superdata, they think that Hearthstone could be “killing itself”.
According to the firm, they claim that revenue from Hearthstone’s mobile apps on iOS and Android have been the lowest since the game was launched, and was down significantly year-over-year and month-over-month. The desktop version of the game has also seen a decline in revenue, although not by as much compared to mobile.
The company claims that this is due to recent gameplay decisions made by Blizzard that have left players unhappy. “Recent gameplay decisions have been unpopular with the Hearthstone community, and the result has been a sharp decrease in conversion on mobile.” In that regard, they are pretty spot on.
Recently Hearthstone players have expressed their dissatisfaction with the game’s prices which has been increased, although to be fair this is due to the fluctuation in currency which isn’t really within Blizzard’s control. However Blizzard did announce some changes to the way Hearthstone expansions are released, which according to the calculations will see players spend more money if they were to purchase everything using real-life money.
That being said it seems that Hearthstone is far from imploding upon itself or shutting down, but perhaps these are metrics that Blizzard needs to pay attention to if they’re hoping to keep the game running for the foreseeable future.
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