Hearthstone Will Make YOU PAY! Record Low Profits and High Expectations 

I seriously don't understand why they up the prices so much. Back when the prices were lower. I was buying stuff all the time. But since they became so expensive I haven't bought a single thing. In total I probably spent like 120 euros on Hearthstone, buying 5-6 different items. But if the items are 60 euros per piece. They're not getting a dime out of me. So do they really, really think that they can rely on whales only instead of the average player that maybe buys one product every once in a while?

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that blizzard is putting too much effort into overpriced monetization, but barely put any effort into improving the quality of the game. Power creep has gone too far, the design philosophy encourages every turn to be as explosive as possible so the entire dimension of setting up future plays is hardly present, and it feels like the only real form of decision making and interaction between the players is disruption, which is a very telling sign that the game is in a bad state - in my opinion, at least. Unless blizzard somehow wakes up and turns everything on its head, I don't see myself playing Hearthstone in a year's time. And since we have already seen from blizzard so many pathetic manipulations, fake promises and straight up lies, I don't feel optimistic here.

How do hearthstone expect me to pay something, if the pre-order bundle cost 1/4 of Brazilian minimal wage…

I started playing since old gods. Have been playing consistently since then, moved to wild 4 years ago, payed quite a lot of money to have golden decks and signature cards. I quit hearthstone roughly a year ago. What's the point of me having all those shiny cards when I die on turn 4-5 and have no chance of playing them?

I play since GvG and have spend a lot an preorders and tracks. But who in his right mind spends 60 (!) bucks for a skin?? And worse, who thought that was a viable price for it? It’s insane.

I'm willing to bet the monetization problems aren't even all that bad. They've definitely dipped below their expected profits, but I think Microsoft just expects infinite growth, which is something that will never happen. Most of these bad decisions are driving away players, including many dolphin level spenders. Dolphins should be part of the driving force of a game's monetization style, and the fact they're driving them away to focus on whales is not a good sign at all.

9:05 what is this statement? Players don't have to buy anything, it's not like we refused to buy the bundles, we decided not to because they are bad deals. Sell 50 packs + 3 legendaries for 10 euros and people will gladly buy the offer.

I've said this for a LONG time now and people act like I'm crazy who still want to stick around for it. They have literally priced out their audience. You have to spend ONE HUNDRED AND 50 DOLLARS every 4 months to not even get every card that gets released. For a digital card came that has no in real life value. Jesus they even released a literal 60 dollar Ragnaros skin. Their greed caused the downfall of this game . Point gd blank.

Monetization is not so much the problem. We know people and companies need to make ends meet. The problem is that a lot of the monetizing is done poorly. I think over 90% of people who play would be willing to purchase things if they were not ridiculously overpriced. Even if I love playing the game I am not going to pay 70 dollars for a bundle or a skin. That’s how much a whole game costs!! That is not reasonable to ask a player base to do that. That’s not loyalty that’s fanaticism .

The idea that in order for a company to be successful it should be ever expanding and increasing profits is a harmful and wrong idea. Unless the owner actually feels it’s unsustainable for them at current profits, the goal should be to find a stable balance of profits, so all the company employees have stable jobs, and the owner has a stable source of income.

I left Hearthstone a while back. Hadn't looked back.

hath hearthstone thought oh i don't know making PVE modes again? (you know the game mode people play when Metal Toxic and Unfun till a meta shift)

When the devs gives out a poll that essentially asks "Hey, how would you like this to be the last year of this game?" things are not going in the right direction.

STOP SELLING PORTRAITS! They are the LAST thing I want to pay money for! All they do is offer PORTRAITS, PORTRAITS, and PORTRAITS. I havent wanted a portrait for years, how about something else? Blizz has tried nothing and theyre out of idea,s lol

I think they forgot about the micro part of the microtransactions

If card packs and/or skins were cheaper many people would buy them, why pay 50 dollars for a bundle that might give you at best two legendaries that will become obsolete in the next year when you can buy a physical or digital game or more depending the game

their strategy for monetization sucks and is going to slowly choke whatever life is left in the game OR push more players to F2P Why would you keep making things more expensive if people are buying less? Thats the reverse of supply and demand, the demand is low so lower the price? and then if they add P2W options in ANY game mode it dies immediately as we have competitive options that dont do that, and it would further the issue. This would be like if magic the gathering decided to allow people to just spend money to guarantee mana, or if yugioh allowed you to draw cards for money, it would just kill the game unlike games that are designed to be P2W. Clearly they are not being creative or steadfast in how they monetize and promote the game. Ironically blizzard Id spend $20 3 times a year on your game every year if I could still buy the fucking adventures again, THAT was fun and a fun way to get some cards, and I still go back to play dungeon runs, I used to do preorder packs when everything (including tavern pass) was included and you separated it and the value was lost. You keep finding out there is a limit to what people are willing to spend the hard way...

If they make pre-orderes and the tavern pass have pay to win features then it will just make me not want to buy them

Oh no you dont **Burns 50 dollars rather than saving it for pre-expansion **

People still not only play but also pay for this shit 😂😂😂 sad stuff !

i mostly only do quests, i mad over 10k gold already in this era.. u can buy everything with gold in hs (except some cosmetics).

Since they changed ranked matchmaking, a complete new player can comfortably reach legend rank by conceding until facing bots then playing until they reach a new rank floor, rinse repeat. I'd argue this is a reason why there's more legend players. Just play a better game, this is pathetic. Sounds like a woman staying with an abusing husband because they think they can fix him and go back to how it used to be.

Hearthstone is not profitable ENOUGH for the managment board. Yeah, it does make money, but how about more? Squeeze out every "unneccessary" thing by firing workers and just sell more, no matter what, just sell more! No need for good voice actors or new voice actors at all, no need for boards, trailers, keywords, mechanics, balance, lore, story, single player, hype or anything just make more of same thing to sell! Force the players in by making the quest grind harder and make them pay for new cards with power creep! Gotta achieve infinite growth this fiscal quarter or investors might drink our milks! Fun, focus, fearless!

The free-to-play model as a whole might slowly be dying. Very specific economic and growth contexts allowed for the rise of that model in the 2005-2020 period, but now the situation has completely changed (inflation alone changes the problem completely, and it's far from the only change since the late 2000's!). The most entrenched free to play games might be able to last a few more years, but this is becoming harder and harder to make it actually profitable. Especially for newcomers and maybe older games that don't require total commitment (like, say, MOBAs do). ...And that would include Hearthstone.

The 80 euros pre bundle is most efficient but most of us cant afford that every 4 months. They should reconsider prices of legendaries, 25 euros for 1 golden legendary is too expensive to get 1 specific legendary.

this will bethe first rotation where I havent finished the reward track too... ooooooooof... i HATE THIS GAME RIGHT NOW

$600k per month? Is probably barely enough to pay employees and server maintenance, it is not an indie group of 4 people with one cloud server afterall...

The monetizing is getting worse because profit lines must go up all the time. It can never level off and just be profitable.

Ok here's a crazy idea that could totally fail. Personally my main issue with spending money on this game is that packs give you random stuff, I don't want random stuff. I like a specific type of deck and if I open a pack and get 5 cards that don't fit that kind of deck, I just essentially wasted money because dusting cards is awful value. What if they added an in game player to player marketplace to trade cards with premium currency. You want a Skyla? It's for sale for €2. Then they take a small cut of that currency as tax, maybe 5% on each transaction to essentially remove it from the economy. This is somewhat the same model as Counter Strike and Valve marketplace.

At this point you need a full te job to play hearstone, or sell your kidney

I hate the fact that I have to spend money to have fun or verity.

Shout out to everyone that translated to some of the languages

I never bought a cosmetic. I'm honestly ready to abandon HS. I ve been a BG fan since release but slowly getting bored with the fast pace meta

You can tell this game is not what it used to be. It feels corporate and cold, trying to squeeze money out of players without giving anything back but useless cosmetics. When you put money first, nothing ever works out. I have been playing this game for 10 years and am skeptical of its future!

I didnt buy Ragnaros skin, nor any skin, ever. Im a 95% free players (excepto for those only with money adventures from a few years ago). Still, I would rather have a very special skin as an opponent sometimes, than one more battlefield that does nothing new.

I was a loyal buyer of expansions since the beginning.. I was always excited when I heard of a new expansion.. new mechanics new cards..not neccesarily stronger cards.. but DIFFERENT cards.. Now theres very little creativity in card design.. a max of 2 mechanics each expansion and the abhorrent proposal to mobile players who apparently prerer shorter games.. And now what we are left with are games that are over before they have begun.. planning has been left to streamers who create the best decks even before the expansion is released and people netdeck the strongest/obnoxious/fastest decks on day 1 of expansions.. finally each expansion has 1-3 auto include neutral legendaries effectively making the game more p2w This is why I stopped supporting the game.. The hearhstone I came and stayed for are sadly dead and buried.

This is why I stopped playing. The last many expansions felt like a way to generate revenue and nothing more. I am ok with businesses making money, but this felt different.

What if they offer a fee to play the game? I don't play wow but my friend told me, its like 13€ per month. In exchange people could get all the cards available, while spending a regular amount if money in game. They could also offer hero skins for a lower price and get rid of the gambling experience of opening packs.

Seriously it's because of the game performance and technical problems of the game and bugs is ramping down the players with little bugs have been fixed for each patch release even my new pc just bought for 1k$ other games that I played is working well with higher graphics settings but hearthstone? 😂😂😂 it's ridiculous you know

Not bragging here, I’ve got a problem lol I’ve spent over 15k usd in this game since its inception. And even I, refuse to pay money for skins, I hesitate to even preorder anymore, just use my gold or craft when I need it

They should make subscription tiers. One tier for ALL STANDARD CARDS ( no more then £10/month) and a second tier for ALL THE CARDS ( no more than £20 ).

We need a well functioning standard mode, BGs and Arena. All other modes are in my opinion not neeeded. Cosmetics should be bought with money, if one chooses to (mythic skins as well as boards) AND the most important thing: tournaments need to be pushed again. We need to have a carrot to chase. There need to be a stake in playing the game and also more reasons to watch it on twitch etc. With investing more in standard and in esports, this implies that insane game changing cards should not be printed or at least tuned down

Holy shit... I love playing bg's. I gotta admit, it will be paintful to let it finally go. It will be a sad day, if they will go for that 'self-destruct' option (pay-to-win tokens). But yeah, everything good has an end, it is just a circle of life. Maybe I should prepare for that day and find something else in advance

I'm 98% a free play I ocasionally buy the $10 for 20 packs on the shop or the $1 for 5 packs which are a deal for me! But never buy anything else

No way am I going to buy a skin for 60 euro. But the bad thing is that there are people - who cannot think clearly enough or are easily addicted - and then buy the entire store empty. I think it is very bad that companies are milking these people, who can get into financial problems as a result.

I don't get it, cos the more they jack up prices, the less I spend. I have spent zero dollars this rotation, only getting packs with gold and climbing with elemental mage - a deck with zero legendaries that can be crafted for less than 1000 dust.

I broke off my streak of buying stuff at least 3 years ago. The only thing I bought since is c’thun (guilty impulse buy)

The items and prices are way out of hand. I can justify buying packs or portraits at $10 here and there, but $60 for a card? That is more than the price of a Warcraft expansion. Seems a bit weird to me. They need to focus on what made the game fun and on lower price offers. Bring Twist back. I spent the $20 on those hero cards I was missing just to play the format and they took it away.

The fact that I got this video in my feed means that I only get recommended videos from this channel when it's about money. Nifty. Thanks, The Algorithm.

I think it is no use how good or bad cosmetics Blizzard create to get money... ppl would buy them to support the game.. including me.. I would buy some again (however not for 60$ thats for sure.. what did they think really? This is the price of a whole new game.. :\) but until this trash card design is going on.. most of players will not pay for it because they don't see a reason to do it.. AND if they will try to implement pay2win features like HP potion, etc... then they can be sure... it will make the players just more upset and more and more will stop playing instead of paying... because such pay2win features would make the game absolutely killed I think.. I still say.. the problem is the card designing for a long time now.. that's what lead to this point.. reckless card design.. the hidden mechanics behind the nowday cards.. MM change was a great idea tough, since that happened it feels much more better.. atleast they did something really good finally! The question now is that.. WHY the hell did they keep up this unfair MM before? To let only the most OP decks reach Legend.. that is the only expanation I can think of.. and all the problems starts here. The game should be based on SKILL.. not Over Power.. no matter if it happens in early (aggro) or late game (Reno, Boomboss, OTK).

It’s not complicated at all. The charge way too much for everything in the store while also not doing anything to improve the quality of the game. There’s almost no incentive to invest in the game. It’s basic economics. People buy more at lower prices. With the current strategy you can only hope to monetize the whales. Current prices are just too unreasonable for regular people

The Ragnaros mythic skin is great! As soon as I see it I can laugh at how much money my opponent wasted and imagine what other poor life choices they've made.

This is so wrong, in chile i used to buy tavern pass, and a couple of bundles with packs and legendaries each expansion, since they double the prices here i have not spend a cent anymore :(

honestly, i don't care about the prices of stuff like skins and sig cards, I don't buy them and I still wouldn't if they were cheaper. The game however seems to be stuck in a decline, like really ? twist wonders after months of downtime ? Sell expensive af skins all you want, but if the state of the game feels shaky it's gonna be tough to convince a lot of people

Microsoft bought blizzard in order to have billion dollar worth franchises. Sadly that is not the reality. Rumble, hearthstone, StarCraft are franchises that have been deemed not billion dollar worth and hence abandoned

Pay 60 dollars for 3 legendaries in a dying game? Oorr you could just use all that money on any game that you could have way more fun in, and possibly play forever.

When you went to 11 classes and 800 year for cards while steadly increase power creep. Add the fact that botting has been awful and warcraft rumble has been repeatedly called out due to poor game design .

Why cant gaming companies figure out that we just want a fun game? People will pay for whatever price, just make the game fun, not whatever it is rn

the prices are def getting more insane and i really dont like it, i honestly would buy more bundles and such if they just staying in the 10-25 range

I haven't followed hearthstone in a while.. Are they really doing early access cards? How does that work? It sounds so ridiculous.

I haven't faced anyone yet with the new Ragnaros skin. And I play quite a lot. Surely that's a sign it didn't sell too much.

The moment we care about "management" and "greed" and lack of problem solving - the game is dead... And something spectacular has to happen - like Twist not being locked - for it to come to life again

They made the actual main gamemode suck for years now, battlegrounds is so good but they dont seem to know how to make more money off of it.

No thx I won't pay, they need to fix the game and make some actual balance changes, but they won't so I will watch it die with a fat smile on my face.

Them increasing the prices so much ironically has the *exact opposite* effect from what they want. It discourages people from buying tbh

Isn't more people buying something good? The lower the price more buyers...

Such an amazing video, as always! Dora is right, you guys are informative, I like your content a lot! Thank you for doing this!

They should offer something for everyone. A better battlepass that is very cheap would be great for profits.

You have my time and attention, is that not enough!? If not, check me up and ill make a cult out of it.

Where is our free shit for being gamepass ultimate subscriber? This is a predatory game and should be banned anyway

The china server bundle is quite pricey at $125. I agree that they want to increase average spending.

sucking fun out of a game to cater to e sports? and then overcharging cosmetics isnt working....who da thunk it.

The cinematics thing is funny: I rarely see people ASKING for ads 😂

I’m not buying things in a game when the game is dogshit, maybe they should balance their game first.

I tried giving your channel a chance but can’t stand these robot voices. Good luck

If they want people to spend money they need to make the product cheaper not more expensive.

Well, considering I quit just before the miniset I'd like to see them try 😂

Thats okay. They wanted to hunt whales so bad now they can just live with it.

We had a good run, it's time for Microsoft to drop the axe on this corpse of a game

The game is too stale and boring, no need to keep playing and buying 😂

I buy pre-order bundles but will never spend on cosmetics.

riot killed lor i have no faith in any computer tcg

Just tooo boring to play now and like a chore 😢

the new bg design proposals are absolutely depressing. people hardly swallowed a separate season pass, if they make the mode directly pay-to-win, the audience will leave. no offence but hearthstone has more mature and logical audience than most mobile games, and people won't buy it. what next, 3 energy per day then you need to cough up to continue playing at all?

IM DONE PAYING AND RENTING PIXELS

9:41 I am against the Mythic skins.

I love this type of videos

rag skin is cringe

Never paid. Never will

This game is more expensive than a damned gacha game

First?😊

63rd

Btw I have a solution that may make people buy more stuff. 1) INCREASE number of free rewards and number of paid rewards: make Fire Festival profitable, the Christmas one, etc. Make them recurring in the mean that you can get rewards several times by grinding the game, like a quest "deal 2000 damage to an enemy hero" that gives a pack and can be completed endlessly during the festivity. Return the "10 gold - 3 wins" thing. 2) stop producing giant skins, and DELETE mini-sets as they only take 2000 gold to be bought completely, which is not a good monetisation strategy (gold should be spent on returning skins or packs) 3) Let the new players grab all the eleven decks you give them for free 4) And, most importantly, increase the number of expansions per year. Ideally - double it. If 6 is too much, 5 is ok too. That way we get those benefits: 1) MUCH more players (lol, 11 decks for free, wtf) makes older players return (even those who paid a lot) 2) much more cards result in more preorders, but channels like yours will be overwhelmed by people screaming "they return 10 per win!!" "they give 11 decks!" "they give more resources!" "you can farm endlessly!" and people like me, who will say "finally MORE CONTENT!". So people will be forced to either play their heads out, or buy a preorder or two to catch up. And then. They give us the "Year pass"© but not the one you proposed. By the cost of only 24000 blue thingies you get ALL the BIG PREORDERS of that year. Not even a full access. People will be unhappy, but then realise just how profitable it is. One big preorder is 8k, and there will be let's say 6 each year, it's 50% off! Same idea for small preorders and tavern passes too. Here's why it's good: people will buy one and be chained to a game for a year, forced to "play their purchase" => forced to enter the shop from time to time and maybe even buy something. That way we have: More content More players More in-game purchases (guaranteed) Less skins, because you can ROTATE OLD ONES Not a big change in needed team What do you think, Hearthstone Mathematicians?

The ONLY thing I am probably willing to pay for is the option to ban specific class from matchmaking. Diamond and signature cards are meh IMO, new skins are unintersting - not for a fraction of a second I thought about buying that Rag skin...

Left hs last year, you have to pay insane amounts to keep yourself on track