So, I missed the 2018 numbers being released, but Omnistone had it covered. If you've already watched the latest Omni, there will only be a small amount of information added here.
For the rest of you . . .
In 2016, Hearthstone made $400 million.
In 2017, Hearthstone made $1400 million.
In 2018, Hearthstone made $700 million.
Frodan rightfully pointed out that two things are worrisome: First, that's a 50% drop in one year, and second, wild swings in either direction with no explanation often frighten investors.
This is meaningless, in this case, because we know EXACTLY why these swings occurred. In 2017, Blizzard played the ultimate trump card of the Warcraft IP. They created an expansion based around Wrath of the Lich King, the expansion of World of Warcraft which catapulted the parent MMO into 12 million active accounts and the largest market share WoW ever held.
The nostalgia factor of Wrath of the Lich King cannot be overstated, and the Hearthstone team knew it. I certainly wouldn't have guessed it was good for a $1 billion spike, but it was clear before the set was even announced that 2017 was going to be an aberrant year for revenue.
So, what does all this mean? If you look at the trend of revenue in Hearthstone, you see a steady, relatively high rate of growth punctuated by one crazy spike into the stratosphere and then settling back into the overall trend. PC Gamer gets to write its hit pieces on Blizzard about the 50% drop last year, but I would imagine Blizzard is quite happy with Cash Cowstone.
Unless . . .
I have written this based on the assumption that everyone on the Activision Blizzard finance side was smart enough to realize the aberrant nature of 2017. If they were smart enough to understand that 2017 was a windfall and not to plan as if every year going forward would gross a billion plus, everything is great. If for some strange reason the forecasters got it in their heads that the heights of 2017 would become standard, I weep to think of the unjustified investments that may have been made.
Given Blizzard's 2018 track record, I'm inclined to be nervous. However, if they have better people than me in their finance departments, all should be good.
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.
Not bad for a small indie company. But I think your last point hits the nail right on the head. And honestly I have no idea how Activision could gut Hearthstone any further but I'm sure they'll surprise me.
Honestly i don't understand where they get this ''small indie company'' thing. They are making MILLIONS only in one game. A card game. Yes it costs money to keep it up. BUT its ''free to play'' game with the condition of ''pay to win''. I would guess it doesn't cost any more than a 100 million to keep up a so called free to play game. In my opinion not a dead game.
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I'm just another one of those. You know, those who do things. Things that need to be done by those that do these things in order to do those things that don't do these things by themselves. Has the word 'things' lost meaning to you already?
Hearthstone is loosing a lot of players. Everyone know that, due to Blizzard's financial position that is going very bad (also due to Diablo immortal) (see market cap on Yahoo finance in the past 3 months), because Blizzard fired 800 people in February (see article) and also because Ayala said that in February on twitter (see screen). So, they are not going well for sure.
They are taking now a lot of risks with this expansion because, they seems lazy.
Come on, this expansion seems very lazy In the design, recycle cards, it is a very fast process. If we Consider also that a lot of people seems leaving Hearthstone because the game is becoming boring, for sure the game is not less boring recycling old stuffs. So, everything like now it is very questionable.
Hearthstone made, after Brode, horrible expansions, and this is unfortunately a fact. After Brode, Hearthstone started to lose players. So, I don't think that Hearthstone will run out its course now, but in the nearly future, if they don't change a lot of things, and the start is really bad.
Even without the numbers, I still struggle to see why anyone would call Hearthstone a dead game. Does anything in the rest of the card game market even compare/compete with Hearthstone’s player numbers and profit margin? Absolutely not. Is the game dead because some Hearthstone streamers play more Autochess now? No.
Even without the numbers, I still struggle to see why anyone would call Hearthstone a dead game. Does anything in the rest of the card game market even compare/compete with Hearthstone’s player numbers and profit margin? Absolutely not. Is the game dead because some Hearthstone streamers play more Autochess now? No.
It is pointless the compare with other card game. When a game become bored and lose players it is pointless compare it with other games. It is loosing players and this is a fact. If you loose too much players you will die and this is another fact.
Who knows? I just cited public information about the revenue and I get "everyone knows there are less players".
I know nothing of the sort, if it's true it's true, but I don't go on feelings. It is difficult to believe that, even ignoring the 2017 spike, you're seeing a 75% revenue growth in 2 years, and yet there are somehow fewer players.
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.
thing is brode still had worked on the expansions released after he left blizzard. with the rotation and new year set to come they finally have to chance to clean up in what broken state he has left HS.
Honestly i don't understand where they get this ''small indie company'' thing. They are making MILLIONS only in one game. A card game. Yes it costs money to keep it up. BUT its ''free to play'' game with the condition of ''pay to win''. I would guess it doesn't cost any more than a 100 million to keep up a so called free to play game. In my opinion not a dead game.
It’s a joke about blizzard being so huge yet making mistakes that are very easy to avoid, its supposed to be sarcastic.
All I know is I was a whale and stopped playing after 1) The expansions got more and more 'kiddy' and goofy, and 2) The new cards and mechanics were less thematically tighter (They have more effects that seem arbitrary and game-boosting in a kind of coarse way, like, 'Lukewarm Sorceress: Discard one card, do 3 damage to a minion, draw a card, place a counter on a thing'.) I assume I'm not the only one who disliked how things changed.
I'm seriously tired of threads like this made by fanboys or relative new players. The game is dying and nothing is gonna change that. You are not deceiving anyone with your weak efforts, statements and numbers. Believe it or not, this is Team 5 last chance. Enoy this joke of a game right now as much as you can, Shadowrisen, because its days are numbered. ;)
I'm seriously tired of threads like this made by fanboys or relative new players. The game is dying and nothing is gonna change that. You are not deceiving anyone with your weak efforts, statements and numbers. Believe it or not, this is Team 5 last chance. Enoy this joke of a game right now as much as you can, Shadowrisen, because its days are numbered. ;)
Hearthstone is loosing a lot of players. Everyone know that, due to Blizzard's financial position that is going very bad (also due to Diablo immortal) (see market cap on Yahoo finance in the past 3 months), because Blizzard fired 800 people in February (see article) and also because Ayala said that in February on twitter (see screen). So, they are not going well for sure.
They are taking now a lot of risks with this expansion because, they seems lazy.
Come on, this expansion seems very lazy In the design, recycle cards, it is a very fast process. If we Consider also that a lot of people seems leaving Hearthstone because the game is becoming boring, for sure the game is not less boring recycling old stuffs. So, everything like now it is very questionable.
Hearthstone made, after Brode, horrible expansions, and this is unfortunately a fact. After Brode, Hearthstone started to lose players. So, I don't think that Hearthstone will run out its course now, but in the nearly future, if they don't change a lot of things, and the start is really bad.
Isn't this the first expansion which has no influence from Brode? Don't they design them in advance? Didn't he preside over the period which introduced Kobolds, one of the most badly designed sets? From what I gather from other player's comments, Gadgetzan was a disaster too on launch, although I only started playing during KOFT. I wish people would stop talking about Brode, if he had any control over the final sets, it seems he was the reason the game got out of hand.
Hearthstone is loosing a lot of players. Everyone know that, due to Blizzard's financial position that is going very bad (also due to Diablo immortal) (see market cap on Yahoo finance in the past 3 months), because Blizzard fired 800 people in February (see article) and also because Ayala said that in February on twitter (see screen). So, they are not going well for sure.
They are taking now a lot of risks with this expansion because, they seems lazy.
Come on, this expansion seems very lazy In the design, recycle cards, it is a very fast process. If we Consider also that a lot of people seems leaving Hearthstone because the game is becoming boring, for sure the game is not less boring recycling old stuffs. So, everything like now it is very questionable.
Hearthstone made, after Brode, horrible expansions, and this is unfortunately a fact. After Brode, Hearthstone started to lose players. So, I don't think that Hearthstone will run out its course now, but in the nearly future, if they don't change a lot of things, and the start is really bad.
Isn't this the first expansion which has no influence from Brode? Don't they design them in advance? Didn't he preside over the period which introduced Kobolds, one of the most badly designed sets? From what I gather from other player's comments, Gadgetzan was a disaster too on launch, although I only started playing during KOFT. I wish people would stop talking about Brode, if he had any control over the final sets, it seems he was the reason the game got out of hand.
Blizzard said that are working in advance for one year yes. But this is pointless. After him Blizzard started to lose players and this is a fact. Now we can say that the expansions have been changed after him, that they made one years before but not totally completed, that at the end Brode was tired and made shit. I don't know and nobody know this. But we know for sure that after him Blizzard started to lose players.
Honestly i don't understand where they get this ''small indie company'' thing. They are making MILLIONS only in one game. A card game. Yes it costs money to keep it up. BUT its ''free to play'' game with the condition of ''pay to win''. I would guess it doesn't cost any more than a 100 million to keep up a so called free to play game. In my opinion not a dead game.
it is because blizz multimillion dollar company but the game still has fuck ton of bugs amd issues ( some of them game losing), inconsistencies that they dont fix for months. Plus recent e-sports , pr fuck ups.
imo hearthstone is fine but needs new features. so i hope competitors do better than maybe blizz will take some action.
So Hearthpwn has devolved into MMO-Champion, with the "this game is dead" debate in full swing. People have been going on about WoW being dead for years. Hearthstone will last. It may never reach the revenue/playerbase hight of 2017, but it will be profitable enough to keep going.
HS peaked somewhere in 2017 and Blizzard capitalized on it by creating 3 massive expansions with almost double the legendaries. After peaking there is only one way to go, and the Year of the Raven did not help one bit.
The game is not dead, but I highly doubt it will ever make it to 2017-levels of life. For consumers who stick around, however, this is great news, because with decays in profits it means the company needs to value us more. Blizzard has improved greatly ever since the game started declining.
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Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
>Game is dead >Makes 700 million in 2018 man I wish I could be that dead.
This game would probably have to drop to like 100 million in revenue to be legitimately considered dead. A DS title cost an average of 500k-1 mil to make. PC and console games cost about 12 million to make. I very much doubt Hearthstone costs much more than that if it costs more at all. This game is making money like no one's business
I'm seriously tired of threads like this made by fanboys or relative new players. The game is dying and nothing is gonna change that. You are not deceiving anyone with your weak efforts, statements and numbers. Believe it or not, this is Team 5 last chance. Enoy this joke of a game right now as much as you can, Shadowrisen, because its days are numbered. ;)
You're high if you think this. Team 5 could fuck around for 3 years with Hearthstone and the game wouldn't die. The fanbase is to big and they simply generate to much capital.
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So, I missed the 2018 numbers being released, but Omnistone had it covered. If you've already watched the latest Omni, there will only be a small amount of information added here.
For the rest of you . . .
In 2016, Hearthstone made $400 million.
In 2017, Hearthstone made $1400 million.
In 2018, Hearthstone made $700 million.
Frodan rightfully pointed out that two things are worrisome: First, that's a 50% drop in one year, and second, wild swings in either direction with no explanation often frighten investors.
This is meaningless, in this case, because we know EXACTLY why these swings occurred. In 2017, Blizzard played the ultimate trump card of the Warcraft IP. They created an expansion based around Wrath of the Lich King, the expansion of World of Warcraft which catapulted the parent MMO into 12 million active accounts and the largest market share WoW ever held.
The nostalgia factor of Wrath of the Lich King cannot be overstated, and the Hearthstone team knew it. I certainly wouldn't have guessed it was good for a $1 billion spike, but it was clear before the set was even announced that 2017 was going to be an aberrant year for revenue.
So, what does all this mean? If you look at the trend of revenue in Hearthstone, you see a steady, relatively high rate of growth punctuated by one crazy spike into the stratosphere and then settling back into the overall trend. PC Gamer gets to write its hit pieces on Blizzard about the 50% drop last year, but I would imagine Blizzard is quite happy with Cash Cowstone.
Unless . . .
I have written this based on the assumption that everyone on the Activision Blizzard finance side was smart enough to realize the aberrant nature of 2017. If they were smart enough to understand that 2017 was a windfall and not to plan as if every year going forward would gross a billion plus, everything is great. If for some strange reason the forecasters got it in their heads that the heights of 2017 would become standard, I weep to think of the unjustified investments that may have been made.
Given Blizzard's 2018 track record, I'm inclined to be nervous. However, if they have better people than me in their finance departments, all should be good.
Either way, dead game? Not so much.
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.
Not bad for a small indie company. But I think your last point hits the nail right on the head. And honestly I have no idea how Activision could gut Hearthstone any further but I'm sure they'll surprise me.
Honestly i don't understand where they get this ''small indie company'' thing. They are making MILLIONS only in one game. A card game. Yes it costs money to keep it up. BUT its ''free to play'' game with the condition of ''pay to win''. I would guess it doesn't cost any more than a 100 million to keep up a so called free to play game. In my opinion not a dead game.
I'm just another one of those. You know, those who do things. Things that need to be done by those that do these things in order to do those things that don't do these things by themselves. Has the word 'things' lost meaning to you already?
Hearthstone is loosing a lot of players. Everyone know that, due to Blizzard's financial position that is going very bad (also due to Diablo immortal) (see market cap on Yahoo finance in the past 3 months), because Blizzard fired 800 people in February (see article) and also because Ayala said that in February on twitter (see screen). So, they are not going well for sure.
They are taking now a lot of risks with this expansion because, they seems lazy.
Come on, this expansion seems very lazy In the design, recycle cards, it is a very fast process. If we Consider also that a lot of people seems leaving Hearthstone because the game is becoming boring, for sure the game is not less boring recycling old stuffs. So, everything like now it is very questionable.
Hearthstone made, after Brode, horrible expansions, and this is unfortunately a fact. After Brode, Hearthstone started to lose players. So, I don't think that Hearthstone will run out its course now, but in the nearly future, if they don't change a lot of things, and the start is really bad.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/activision-blizzard-fires-almost-800-employees.html
Even without the numbers, I still struggle to see why anyone would call Hearthstone a dead game. Does anything in the rest of the card game market even compare/compete with Hearthstone’s player numbers and profit margin? Absolutely not. Is the game dead because some Hearthstone streamers play more Autochess now? No.
It is pointless the compare with other card game. When a game become bored and lose players it is pointless compare it with other games. It is loosing players and this is a fact. If you loose too much players you will die and this is another fact.
Who knows? I just cited public information about the revenue and I get "everyone knows there are less players".
I know nothing of the sort, if it's true it's true, but I don't go on feelings. It is difficult to believe that, even ignoring the 2017 spike, you're seeing a 75% revenue growth in 2 years, and yet there are somehow fewer players.
Not impossible, but I seriously doubt it.
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.
thing is brode still had worked on the expansions released after he left blizzard. with the rotation and new year set to come they finally have to chance to clean up in what broken state he has left HS.
It’s a joke about blizzard being so huge yet making mistakes that are very easy to avoid, its supposed to be sarcastic.
I exist, I think.
All I know is I was a whale and stopped playing after 1) The expansions got more and more 'kiddy' and goofy, and 2) The new cards and mechanics were less thematically tighter (They have more effects that seem arbitrary and game-boosting in a kind of coarse way, like, 'Lukewarm Sorceress: Discard one card, do 3 damage to a minion, draw a card, place a counter on a thing'.) I assume I'm not the only one who disliked how things changed.
"Unless you do your best, the day will come when, tired and hungry, you will halt just short of the goal you were ordered to reach." - Patton
I think ignoring 2017 as a mere "spike" is utterly wrong.
I'm seriously tired of threads like this made by fanboys or relative new players. The game is dying and nothing is gonna change that. You are not deceiving anyone with your weak efforts, statements and numbers. Believe it or not, this is Team 5 last chance. Enoy this joke of a game right now as much as you can, Shadowrisen, because its days are numbered. ;)
Isn't this the first expansion which has no influence from Brode? Don't they design them in advance? Didn't he preside over the period which introduced Kobolds, one of the most badly designed sets? From what I gather from other player's comments, Gadgetzan was a disaster too on launch, although I only started playing during KOFT. I wish people would stop talking about Brode, if he had any control over the final sets, it seems he was the reason the game got out of hand.
Blizzard said that are working in advance for one year yes. But this is pointless. After him Blizzard started to lose players and this is a fact. Now we can say that the expansions have been changed after him, that they made one years before but not totally completed, that at the end Brode was tired and made shit. I don't know and nobody know this. But we know for sure that after him Blizzard started to lose players.
it is because blizz multimillion dollar company but the game still has fuck ton of bugs amd issues ( some of them game losing), inconsistencies that they dont fix for months. Plus recent e-sports , pr fuck ups.
imo hearthstone is fine but needs new features. so i hope competitors do better than maybe blizz will take some action.
So Hearthpwn has devolved into MMO-Champion, with the "this game is dead" debate in full swing. People have been going on about WoW being dead for years. Hearthstone will last. It may never reach the revenue/playerbase hight of 2017, but it will be profitable enough to keep going.
HS peaked somewhere in 2017 and Blizzard capitalized on it by creating 3 massive expansions with almost double the legendaries. After peaking there is only one way to go, and the Year of the Raven did not help one bit.
The game is not dead, but I highly doubt it will ever make it to 2017-levels of life. For consumers who stick around, however, this is great news, because with decays in profits it means the company needs to value us more. Blizzard has improved greatly ever since the game started declining.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
>Game is dead
>Makes 700 million in 2018
man I wish I could be that dead.
This game would probably have to drop to like 100 million in revenue to be legitimately considered dead. A DS title cost an average of 500k-1 mil to make. PC and console games cost about 12 million to make. I very much doubt Hearthstone costs much more than that if it costs more at all. This game is making money like no one's business
You're high if you think this. Team 5 could fuck around for 3 years with Hearthstone and the game wouldn't die. The fanbase is to big and they simply generate to much capital.