Agreed that if this is not generating the money that Activision Blizzard wants or is expecting, they will either scrap the game or find ways to milk out the nickels and dimes from its user base.
Hearthstone supposedly has millions of users worldwide. Despite it being F2P, people do in fact spend money.
I would like to see this game continue and do so successfully. This requires the whole team, including the devs, CEOs and whomever else makes decisions to realize 1 simple thing. You cannot grow or continue to be successful without 'Player Retention'. Some would call that repeat business or perhaps loyal customers.
There are many ways to gain new players as well as keep old ones around. You don't do it by pissing off your player base, giving them less for the money they do spend or insult the player base's intelligence.
Take MTG Arena as an example for how to generate money without even needing to release new content....
MTG Arena, has game modes that require you to 'pay'. You either need gold or gems. Gold is the free economy system and the Gems are the premium system. Most of the more desirable play modes like Sealed require Gems. Gems are usually and most often obtained with real money. But MTG Arena is not requiring you to use gems or spend money or play in these modes.
So, a very simple way to generate money is to offer a tournament mode in which it requires gold and/or real money to enter. You have a pay out system for the number of wins. And you have yourself a very easy way to make money without releasing new expansions.
They attempted this with those Brawl events, but not having them as a permanent mode is silly. You can even make them cash only events.
How about offering discounts on all the card backs people missed and get them to pay up? or Hero skins? There are plenty of people who would pay for skins they couldn't or wouldn't acquire in the past if they sold them at a discount.
So we will see if this is a trend in Blizzard and if this hurts Hearthstone or has nothing to do with it. We don't have their financial numbers to know for sure.
As I said days ago, Activision Blizzard is doomed, and this reaffirms it. They are digging their own grave with their silly policies and the way they approach their business estrategy. Of course, the common people working for them are the first ones to pay the price, as always. The fanboy legions are also guilty of this, for supporting blindly such silly behaviour. I wonder if they now can sleep at night... Haha, but who am I kidding? Of course they can, they don't give a shit about anyone except their foolish whims... XD
There is a chance that improvements to streamline the development process and promote reuse have resulted in better operational efficiency that requires fewer workers. Of course, such improvements, unless the result of a heavy up-front NRE (not likely in the game industry) need no more than standard attrition to rebalance the staffing levels.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
Likely cuts to the Warcraft team, the game has been tanking for years in popularity. I doubt we'll feel many cuts in HS as that's been an extremely good money maker and is relatively cheap to produce compared to many other games. Frankly it's their own fault, quality has dropped off tremendously in many of their biggest games. Warcraft is one of the priciest MMO's around in terms of expansion cost + subscription and it needs to innovate to make that cost worth it to consumers.
Honestly most players I know still playing (friends I made over the years that I keep in contact with even after quitting) stay around for the community, not the game.
As someone pointed out above me though, executives and members of the Board are still cashing in huge bonuses and tremendously ridiculous paychecks. They won't even feel a pay cut as they lay off hundreds.
Activision is the most cancerous corporate entity I’ve seen. Like even big cigarette companies at least deliver an overpriced product that people “like.” Activisions business model seems to be ruining everyone’s favorite franchises while making consumers pay more for the dwindling quality. First bungie now blizzard, who are they going to screw over next? Bethesda?
I've written several times how I'm an Activision investor, and the past four or five months have cut the value of that investment in half.
Having watched Blizzard develop over the past 25 years, the inescapable conclusion is that Activision has insisted on some changes in the financial side of the company. I try to remind myself that Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm may have never come to be in the first place without the merger, but we've certainly played a price for it recently.
I still have high hopes for Blizzard. They have entertained and enriched me (literally and otherwise) my entire life, and I'm not ready to call it quits quite yet.
Having said that, I respect the notion that you don't want to reward bad behavior with your money. That's absolutely correct, and the world would be a far better place if people were more responsible consumers as a whole. But, you have to accept both sides of that equation.
Someone in this thread scoffed at the notion of spending money on the "free to play" game, but that's a willfully childish way to look at this. Free to play pricing models don't suggest the company is making the game out of boredom and altruism. If Hearthstone doesn't make money, Hearthstone will cease to exist, and THAT is a great reason to spend money on the game if you are a fan.
All of which ignores the publicly-disclosed fact that Hearthstone is doing very well. Hearthstone is one of the largest ongoing sources of revenue for Blizzard, and it grew significantly in 2018. So, though Blizzard has made several horrendous missteps with other IPs, Hearthstone is doing quite well. Hopefully, it will stay that way.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
Pay them to support their horrible business practice? Sure, why not! Oh, because I earn my money and don't want to give it to executives that hand themselves fat bonuses and then quit in three months. That's why not.
There is a chance that improvements to streamline the development process and promote reuse have resulted in better operational efficiency that requires fewer workers. Of course, such improvements, unless the result of a heavy up-front NRE (not likely in the game industry) need no more than standard attrition to rebalance the staffing levels.
The thing is that Activision-Blizzard's issues aren't stemming from high costs of doing business or spreading thsemselves too thin. Then you can find ways to scale back either the less profitable operations or find more efficient means of maintaining the same output.
What I suspect they are doing is focusing on short term numbers. Gutting a business doesn't instantly result in a loss of sales: that happens later when your diminished company isn't able to deliver the same quality nor able to perform the research to further improve their products. Thus your financial figures LOOK nice, with low immediate costs and still high sales.
I fear that this is their goal, with the hope to find some risky play to push the more diminished company to keep up the sales figures later. That typically means more flash and hype and less quality, relying on brand instead of improving the brand, and hoping the train keeps chugging until they hit lightning in a bottle.
That's not healthy in the long term, and the company will burn for it eventually.
As far as the matter of trying to preserve the company, that's both fair and unfair. It's fair to bring up that a game and company needs its customers to keep it afloat. It's unfair to not consider WHY customers may not be wanting to give the company that support.
If this was a company that people appreciate and like, but they weren't actively supporting it, then a call to arms like this may be appropriate. But many people are highly critical of the company and its practices. They have a reason why they feel they can't support them. Thus asking those people to do so isn't putting the entire situation in perspective.
A customer's money is a sign of the acceptance the customer has over the company and their methods. If the customer cannot accept the practices of the company and its products, then there is no reason for the money to come.
That there are workers that are going to suffer is a sad thing and looking for a solution to their situation is valid. But demanding the public to pay into their company just to keep the workers employed isn't the right solution. It encourages the business practices that put those workers in jeopardy in the first place. A solution for the workers lies elsewhere, not in customers paying for a product they don't believe in.
I highly doubt this has much to do with how HS is performing, don't forget that Activision just recently lost one of it's largest IPs in Destiny, to which it probably had a large amount of employees dedicated to supporting. Of all of Blizzard's titles that could possibly be in the crosshairs, I'd say HOTS has the most to worry about. A MOBA without a supported esports scene seems irrelevant.
I refuse to fund a business model that only rewards continuous unsustainable growth and punishes delays for quality control purposes. I will continue to remain F2P and not spend a penny on HS until they actually improve the game in a meaningful way and not just drip feed the community with extra dust and gold.
The fact that they were willing to spend resources on "censoring" art no-one even paid a lick of attention to should give you an indication of the path this gaming is going towards. If they want to act like WotC and virtue signal, then they should expect the same backlash.
tl;dr until the company decides to put more effort in their games, they seriously aren't worth the money people pay them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Experienced Deckbuilder, Legend Player, Wild Expert, TCG Veteran and Contributing Author toWildHS & Vicious Syndicate. Any and all support is greatly appreciated as it helps me make further quality content. 🐺 ➣Twitter ➣Decks ➣Patreon
And shows just why a free market society is great. When a company has a product and the quality drops over time people will stop buying that product. Activision has made a lot of poor choices and now is feeling the effects. When they improve how they operate and what they release then they will see more players and in turn more revenue and till then the decline will keep happening.
I highly doubt this has much to do with how HS is performing, don't forget that Activision just recently lost one of it's largest IPs in Destiny, to which it probably had a large amount of employees dedicated to supporting. Of all of Blizzard's titles that could possibly be in the crosshairs, I'd say HOTS has the most to worry about. A MOBA without a supported esports scene seems irrelevant.
Activision has said that both Overwatch and Hearthstone are losing players.
Activision is the most cancerous corporate entity I’ve seen.
Electronic Arts say Hi. .
I am pretty sure Konami and Ubisoft can give them both a run for their money too.
While that may be true, I'd still rank them close to the bottom of the worst companies list. Western "gaming" corporations seem to take the cake when it comes to douchery over their Asian counterparts.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Experienced Deckbuilder, Legend Player, Wild Expert, TCG Veteran and Contributing Author toWildHS & Vicious Syndicate. Any and all support is greatly appreciated as it helps me make further quality content. 🐺 ➣Twitter ➣Decks ➣Patreon
I just bought 40 packs after reading this. Thanks for the notice!
Agreed that if this is not generating the money that Activision Blizzard wants or is expecting, they will either scrap the game or find ways to milk out the nickels and dimes from its user base.
Hearthstone supposedly has millions of users worldwide. Despite it being F2P, people do in fact spend money.
I would like to see this game continue and do so successfully. This requires the whole team, including the devs, CEOs and whomever else makes decisions to realize 1 simple thing. You cannot grow or continue to be successful without 'Player Retention'. Some would call that repeat business or perhaps loyal customers.
There are many ways to gain new players as well as keep old ones around. You don't do it by pissing off your player base, giving them less for the money they do spend or insult the player base's intelligence.
Take MTG Arena as an example for how to generate money without even needing to release new content....
MTG Arena, has game modes that require you to 'pay'. You either need gold or gems. Gold is the free economy system and the Gems are the premium system. Most of the more desirable play modes like Sealed require Gems. Gems are usually and most often obtained with real money. But MTG Arena is not requiring you to use gems or spend money or play in these modes.
So, a very simple way to generate money is to offer a tournament mode in which it requires gold and/or real money to enter. You have a pay out system for the number of wins. And you have yourself a very easy way to make money without releasing new expansions.
They attempted this with those Brawl events, but not having them as a permanent mode is silly. You can even make them cash only events.
How about offering discounts on all the card backs people missed and get them to pay up? or Hero skins? There are plenty of people who would pay for skins they couldn't or wouldn't acquire in the past if they sold them at a discount.
So we will see if this is a trend in Blizzard and if this hurts Hearthstone or has nothing to do with it. We don't have their financial numbers to know for sure.
As I said days ago, Activision Blizzard is doomed, and this reaffirms it. They are digging their own grave with their silly policies and the way they approach their business estrategy. Of course, the common people working for them are the first ones to pay the price, as always. The fanboy legions are also guilty of this, for supporting blindly such silly behaviour. I wonder if they now can sleep at night... Haha, but who am I kidding? Of course they can, they don't give a shit about anyone except their foolish whims... XD
There is a chance that improvements to streamline the development process and promote reuse have resulted in better operational efficiency that requires fewer workers. Of course, such improvements, unless the result of a heavy up-front NRE (not likely in the game industry) need no more than standard attrition to rebalance the staffing levels.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
You are wrong, something got ripped out of the original statement.
Blizz will lay off jobs because their products Overwatch and Hearthstone are doing way less profit, too.
<who> <the> <hell > <types> <like> <this >
Likely cuts to the Warcraft team, the game has been tanking for years in popularity. I doubt we'll feel many cuts in HS as that's been an extremely good money maker and is relatively cheap to produce compared to many other games. Frankly it's their own fault, quality has dropped off tremendously in many of their biggest games. Warcraft is one of the priciest MMO's around in terms of expansion cost + subscription and it needs to innovate to make that cost worth it to consumers.
Honestly most players I know still playing (friends I made over the years that I keep in contact with even after quitting) stay around for the community, not the game.
As someone pointed out above me though, executives and members of the Board are still cashing in huge bonuses and tremendously ridiculous paychecks. They won't even feel a pay cut as they lay off hundreds.
Activision is the most cancerous corporate entity I’ve seen. Like even big cigarette companies at least deliver an overpriced product that people “like.” Activisions business model seems to be ruining everyone’s favorite franchises while making consumers pay more for the dwindling quality. First bungie now blizzard, who are they going to screw over next? Bethesda?
I've written several times how I'm an Activision investor, and the past four or five months have cut the value of that investment in half.
Having watched Blizzard develop over the past 25 years, the inescapable conclusion is that Activision has insisted on some changes in the financial side of the company. I try to remind myself that Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm may have never come to be in the first place without the merger, but we've certainly played a price for it recently.
I still have high hopes for Blizzard. They have entertained and enriched me (literally and otherwise) my entire life, and I'm not ready to call it quits quite yet.
Having said that, I respect the notion that you don't want to reward bad behavior with your money. That's absolutely correct, and the world would be a far better place if people were more responsible consumers as a whole. But, you have to accept both sides of that equation.
Someone in this thread scoffed at the notion of spending money on the "free to play" game, but that's a willfully childish way to look at this. Free to play pricing models don't suggest the company is making the game out of boredom and altruism. If Hearthstone doesn't make money, Hearthstone will cease to exist, and THAT is a great reason to spend money on the game if you are a fan.
All of which ignores the publicly-disclosed fact that Hearthstone is doing very well. Hearthstone is one of the largest ongoing sources of revenue for Blizzard, and it grew significantly in 2018. So, though Blizzard has made several horrendous missteps with other IPs, Hearthstone is doing quite well. Hopefully, it will stay that way.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
Pay them to support their horrible business practice? Sure, why not! Oh, because I earn my money and don't want to give it to executives that hand themselves fat bonuses and then quit in three months. That's why not.
Ready for action!
I chuckled
The thing is that Activision-Blizzard's issues aren't stemming from high costs of doing business or spreading thsemselves too thin. Then you can find ways to scale back either the less profitable operations or find more efficient means of maintaining the same output.
What I suspect they are doing is focusing on short term numbers. Gutting a business doesn't instantly result in a loss of sales: that happens later when your diminished company isn't able to deliver the same quality nor able to perform the research to further improve their products. Thus your financial figures LOOK nice, with low immediate costs and still high sales.
I fear that this is their goal, with the hope to find some risky play to push the more diminished company to keep up the sales figures later. That typically means more flash and hype and less quality, relying on brand instead of improving the brand, and hoping the train keeps chugging until they hit lightning in a bottle.
That's not healthy in the long term, and the company will burn for it eventually.
As far as the matter of trying to preserve the company, that's both fair and unfair. It's fair to bring up that a game and company needs its customers to keep it afloat. It's unfair to not consider WHY customers may not be wanting to give the company that support.
If this was a company that people appreciate and like, but they weren't actively supporting it, then a call to arms like this may be appropriate. But many people are highly critical of the company and its practices. They have a reason why they feel they can't support them. Thus asking those people to do so isn't putting the entire situation in perspective.
A customer's money is a sign of the acceptance the customer has over the company and their methods. If the customer cannot accept the practices of the company and its products, then there is no reason for the money to come.
That there are workers that are going to suffer is a sad thing and looking for a solution to their situation is valid. But demanding the public to pay into their company just to keep the workers employed isn't the right solution. It encourages the business practices that put those workers in jeopardy in the first place. A solution for the workers lies elsewhere, not in customers paying for a product they don't believe in.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
I highly doubt this has much to do with how HS is performing, don't forget that Activision just recently lost one of it's largest IPs in Destiny, to which it probably had a large amount of employees dedicated to supporting. Of all of Blizzard's titles that could possibly be in the crosshairs, I'd say HOTS has the most to worry about. A MOBA without a supported esports scene seems irrelevant.
I refuse to fund a business model that only rewards continuous unsustainable growth and punishes delays for quality control purposes. I will continue to remain F2P and not spend a penny on HS until they actually improve the game in a meaningful way and not just drip feed the community with extra dust and gold.
The fact that they were willing to spend resources on "censoring" art no-one even paid a lick of attention to should give you an indication of the path this gaming is going towards. If they want to act like WotC and virtue signal, then they should expect the same backlash.
tl;dr until the company decides to put more effort in their games, they seriously aren't worth the money people pay them.
Electronic Arts say Hi. .
4/3/19 RIP Keith Flint. 😔
I am pretty sure Konami and Ubisoft can give them both a run for their money too.
And shows just why a free market society is great. When a company has a product and the quality drops over time people will stop buying that product. Activision has made a lot of poor choices and now is feeling the effects. When they improve how they operate and what they release then they will see more players and in turn more revenue and till then the decline will keep happening.
Activision has said that both Overwatch and Hearthstone are losing players.
While that may be true, I'd still rank them close to the bottom of the worst companies list. Western "gaming" corporations seem to take the cake when it comes to douchery over their Asian counterparts.
I thought it was because of the lack of sales from Destiny 2.