Hearthstone is celebrating its 10-year anniversary today, March 11, 2024.
When Hearthstone was announced in 2014, its approach to virtualizing the CCG experience seemed fair, even user-friendly.
You could even trash duplicates for “arcane dust,” a resource that lets you craft new cards.
In 2014, randomized packs of items were far from the norm.
The idea of a repeatable transaction that grants you a randomized set of items was not commonplace.
Hearthstone helped to change that.
By virtualizing the CCG experience of randomized card packs, Blizzard had found a repeatable revenue driver.
Then came Overwatch in 2016.
You could trash duplicate cosmetic items for material to buy others that were missing from your collection.
Overwatch was far from the only game to implement the idea.
And soon enough, developers would face a full-throated backlash.
Worse, it went mainstream, attracting attention from outlets like theNew York Timesand drawing comparisons to gambling.
The ESA ultimately added content warning labels andcommitted to further steps as neededin 2019.
But by then the practice was already on its way out.
This is not to say that Hearthstone hasn’t changed significantly since launch.
Arena is joined by Duels–still in beta–and the now-retired but still-available Mercenaries mode.
The main menu houses Battlegrounds, an auto-battler mode, as well as the weekly rotating Tavern Brawl mode.
Likewise, the marketplace itself has changed a lot, as Blizzard has diversified its revenue streams.
But the randomized packs remain, even as most of the industry has moved on.
Maybe its nature as a virtualized card game helps to smooth over general dissatisfaction with randomized pack mechanics.
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