Hearthstone - News, Stats, Players, Teams, and More

In 2016 and 2017, Hearthstone was one of the most popular titles in the gaming industry. Since then, it’s been dying, or at least that’s what the majority of the community says—but Blizzard thinks otherwise.

On July 26, Blizzard Entertainment’s Nathan Lyons-Smith, executive producer for Hearthstone, released a blog post titled “Looking Ahead.” The developer shared his thoughts about the game’s current state and what’s next. Most importantly, he explained that “Hearthstone is here to stay.”

On Nov. 16, Cloud9 announced its departure from multiple titles, parting ways with the lion’s share of its competitors and its creators, winding down its presence in the Overwatch scene alongside the autobattler and card gaming spaces.

Cloud9 released its entire Overwatch League team, and appears to be in the process of shuttering its London Spitfire operation entirely. The move comes after a reported vote that the franchised teams of the league had to exit the league with all outstanding fees waived, and a $6 million payout as a capstone.

Overwatch did it, Diablo followed, and now new signs point to Hearthstone being the latest Blizzard title to join the evergrowing Steam library.

Included in the Patch 28.0 changes for Hearthstone was an update tagged “Global_Error_Steam_Account_Linking”, spotted by Hearthpwn on Nov. 7. This is all it took for speculation to brew that, indeed, Hearthstone is next to jump on the Valve bandwagon.

Blizzard’s autobattler, Battlegrounds, which is built into the card game Hearthstone, received its own set of notable announcements at this year’s BlizzCon—notably a new Duos mode.

As the name suggests, this mode will pit players against each other in teams of two, similar to TFT’s Double Up. Battlegrounds Duos is set to launch sometime in 2024.

While Overwatch players were treated to official news regarding the game’s next hero and Diablo 4 fans saw that game’s first official expansion reveal, it was Hearthstone who quietly had one of the best presentations for any game at this year’s BlizzCon opening ceremony today.

Next year, Hearthstone will celebrate its 10th year, and although Blizzard’s card game has taken a seat on the back burner in recent years, the developers are dedicated to making it more accessible and friendly to returning players. 

From the endless Ultimo and Schnapsen sessions at home to Hold’em poker in dodgy bars in my teenage years and beyond, card games always found a way to seep into my life. In the virtual world, it began with a trickle of flash games, which eventually turned into a flood with Hearthstone, spawning a writing career and some tournament heartbreaks. Almost a decade later, I think it’s time to call it quits, because digital card games have turned into something very different than they used to be.

I’d rather not dwell too much on those old days when I grinded midnight poker freerolls, consoling myself after narrow losses that at least I was better than 2,877 adults. Let’s just say that understanding and manipulating my odds, trying to make something out of nothing, appealed to me greatly. I grew into a Jimmy/Spike, someone looking to win but very much on his own terms. Then along came Hearthstone at the cusp of my young adulthood, and it offered me the chance to do just that.

Activision Blizzard is restructuring the Hearthstone department via means of layoffs, according to LinkedIn posts from former Hearthstone team members.

An Activision Blizzard statement to Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach read, “Organizational changes were made to the Hearthstone team; as a result a small number of roles have become redundant. We want to thank these employees for their many contributions.”

It’s hard to believe it’s been over ten years since the original release of Hearthstone, a Blizzard side project that turned into a money-printing juggernaut that single-handedly launched a new generation of digital collectible card games.

To this day, it remains on top of an admittedly much-diminished genre of games, but the constant power creep of the past few years and the ever-increasing tech debt makes it somewhat hard to recommend as a long-term commitment. Still, it’s heartening and fun to watch someone discover the game for the first time, even to this day, and there is simply so much to do that you simply won’t find anywhere else.

Blizzard marked the tenth year of official Hearthstone esports events by significantly downscaling the competitive calendar, slashing the player count and the prize pool along the way, rendering the scene a little more than a fun pastime.

It’s easy to forget just how large an audience the game used to command, and though trends have clearly changed in esports, Blizzard’s gross mismanagement of the scene brought us where we are today, with little hope that things will improve ever again.

There will be significant cuts for the competitive side of Hearthstone this year, with just three online-only Masters Tour events for the year with no prize pool at stake, and only the 16-player world championship offering any sort of monetary incentive in 2023.

Following the news, which was shared by the title’s esports team, players and developers alike voiced their disappointment about the new direction on Twitter.