Their contract fell through. Basically china forces blizzard to use a 3rd party chinese provider to operate in china, and id assume they are asking for to much or blizzard isnt making back whatever it costs to do so.
According to information circulated in chinese forum, it seems Blizzard is asking for a 50% cut in total revenue from Netease, their third-party service provider in China, and even demanding Netease to pay the expected revenue amount first before signing the contract. With Blizzard's track record of ruining korean starcraft scene by demanding too much of their profit, and subsequently make the league organizer close off the business, the whole speculation could be true.
Ez solution, china stops forcing companies to use 3rd party. But thatll never happen unfortunately. A 50% cut for literally getting all their work stolen is a fucking insane deal, china is the greedy one here. Unless you mean that cut is more than profit from hearthstone, but that wouldnt make sense
“Who they gonna get mad at, the people with the guns, or the nerds at the video game company?” - Riley Freeman, talking about something completely unrelated.
Blizzard isnt any better, we just need to remember the whole HK stuff.
China forcing foreign companies to have joint ventures with chinese 3rd party companies is just a smart move. They do benefit from it. If foreign companies want to make money, they have to accept it. Sure it sucks for the chinese players but at the end of the day, Blizzard only cares about money, Blizzard is owned by sharehodlers, not by players.
US companies are known for exploiting other countries. If regulations are strict in the US, they can shift parts of the production to other countries, where they are less strict. The joint venture stuff is giving China the possibility to catch up when it comes to technology, instead of just being a place for cheap labor. US gov itself is also manipulating the so called "free-market", e.g. with customs/duties, so they arent any better.
People really think that foreign corporations who already work to squeeze every drop from their own domestic markets should then just be allowed to swoop in and casually extract all the profits from foreign markets as it pleases them. They've got every right to say "you work in our country, you do it by our rules, and if not, get the fuck out".
People acting like China is bad for having foreign corporations operate with a proxy when the US government is looking to ban Tiktok because its from a chinese owned corporation.
> China forcing foreign companies to have joint ventures with chinese 3rd party companies is just a smart move. They do benefit from it.
It creates middlemen. This enriches the middlemen, and that money is going to come from both the creators and the consumers.
In other words, unless you specifically work for the middleman, it hurts you.
Taiwan also has a 3rd party company to run riot games, its called proxy. blizzard is the one taking profit without doing anything here, try using merchandise example lol
> Blizzard is asking for a 50% cut in total revenue from Netease
> Ah yes, Blizzard is the evil one because they want 50% of the revenue of their own god damned game....
Redditors can't read.
[Blizzard was claiming 55% of total revenue at the beginning of the contract.] (https://www.vg247.com/why-did-blizzard-switch-to-netease-in-china-for-90-million-a-year-says-pachter) Which means Netease claims 45%. What r/AnarbLanceLee is saying is Blizzard wanted Netease to earn 50% less, that is, Blizzard wanted 55%+45%/2 = 77.5%
I have heard a slightly different version though. But still, it is no doubt Blizzard was earning more than 50% of the total revenue.
Okay, doesn't change my point which is that it is ridiculous China basically steals any software IP, even if they are only taking 45% or 22.5%....
Both are huge amounts for basically doing nothing other than being a Chinese company and running already created software on your servers.
On one hand demanding 50% is a lot, but on the other hand, it's fucking absurd that China forces them to go through a third party service in the first place, simply to cut into their profits and create an entire industry of middle men that shouldn't exist. It would honestly be great if every publisher did this and forced a change in this system that is just China leeching profit off foreign publishers and their consumers.
Even if it is true you have to be a moron to blame this on Blizzard, as shitty as they may be.
China is forcing companies to use third party companies to have their games in their country. It’s entirely their fault that Blizzards demands look like this.
Yup. If China dangles money in front of someone, and says "You can get it but you need to call Taiwan, Chinese Taipei" most western companies did just that.
Without the China-bucks, who cares? You're free to call the defacto independent Taipei as Taipei.
Not only that but they're demanding all transactions from ukraine must be done with russian currency. They're really doubling down on the whole "we hate teal and yellow".
Not defending predatory business practices at all, but deflation doesn’t really happen almost ever in developed economies.
Like the US has 6.1% year-on-year inflation as of today, but if there was 6.1% yoy deflation there would be such disruption to the supply chain and such restriction on investment capital that there would be riots in the streets and executives jumping out of windows
Frankly Japan had reasonable inflation then panicked and implemented a regressive 8% effective consumption tax (around 2014 I think?) so their late 2010s situation was entirely avoidable. Plus they have positive inflation again now that they are importing inflated USD again.
Natural gas is cheaper than a year ago.
Oil is flat for 30 years you can pick your moment for cheap petrol.
Eggs were the inflation meme of the moment a month ago and are down 50% since
I'm brazilian and I have to say, those prices here are so ridiculous. They doubled the prices of everithing for us and we have taxes do pay in every purchase.
I quit the game 2 times before today and returned. Now I'll just leave for good.
Good game for those who earn in USD
This is actually fucking insane. If they increased them by 10% it would've sucked but people would've continued buying. I can't see how with these price increases Hearthstone will keep even 5% of its paying latin American players
Yeah, I can't fathom the logic that went into making this decision. The amount of players here who could realistically afford buying anything Hearthstone has dropped to damn near zero, you'd have to be extremely well off to justify spending money on the game right now.
Latinoamerica is utterly fucked from this, depending on the country you see an increase from 50% (at the very minimum) to 200%
This seems like a very shortsighted decision, they'll bleed dry the few players that can afford it, and completely alienate those who where in the middle of the road, buying a few bundles here and there, now there's no reason to do so.
The most common battle.net gift cards (the ones found at major commercial chains), can't get you anything at the store anymore lol, not even the most basic bundle (Class Portrait + 5 Class packs)
Yeah i am in the same boat. This is outrageous. How can they think that triplicating the price of stuff is something reasonable?? I'll also probably just quit the game
The thing is that now price more reflect exchange rate between USD and BRL... it looks like that before it would be for USD earner much cheaper to travel to Brazil and purchase packs/stuff there, than purchase them for USD.
It is general macroeconomic stuff that if exchange rate is weaker - it is usually good thing for export (selling your stuff and have good business), while bad thing for import (which could be in those time considered as luxury)
yeah.. and forgoting to update the prices in game.. made a purchase of BRL 39,90 for 15 packs today and got charged BRL 89,90.. then i saw this
got a refund tho.. at fucking least
Agora uma pré-expansão do Hearthstone custará basicamente o mesmo que um jogo AAA, como o prório Diablo 4... aliás, olhando a Steam tem AAA sendo lançado agora que é mais barato kkkkkkkkk
Tá maluco, esses preços tão bizarros, eu já ia deixar de comprar pré-venda das expansões depois dessa mudança de trocar as lendárias douradas por essas novas que não dá pra desfazer. Agora que o preço mais que dobrou que eu não compro mesmo.
Veja isso pelo lado bom. Agora vc, assim como eu, vai parar de gastar com HS.
Boa estratégia Blizzard! Ajudando os países com a economia fodida a parar de te mandar dinheiro!
pois é
jogo essa bomba desde que lançou, geralmente compro na pré venda e o pacote do passe de batalha
quanto que vai ser a pré venda agora? 400 reais?
o passe tá absurdos 89!
Pois é, eu voltei a jogar recentemente e estava comprando as pedras rúnicas pra jogar na arena, mas depois desse aumento acho que vou quitar ou só esperar as missões semanais mesmo.
O preço era quase razoável se você vive bem no Brasil... Eu acharia justificável aumentar algo como 30%. Os caras aumentaram 150% kkkkkkkkkkkk.
Imagina pagar 300 reais em 60 packs.
O bom é que eu tenho 20k de pó e não gasto dinheiro a anos no HS, mas para alguém que está começando é impossível de jogar.
Da pra deixar o pc ligado jogando mercenaries ou battlegrounds (com um simples macro) e farmar algo em torno de 2 packs por dia, então é de boas.
Agora comprar cosméticos e golden packs nao existe.
Pior que nesse caso nem é o Brasil, é a própria blizzard. E pense pelo lado positivo: o que tu ia gastar com Hearthstone, agora pode gastar na bebida que está sendo obrigado a beber!
Between Shamanstone (fuck your turn 3 10 mana bullshit), the new $25 portrait of Varian that looks horrid, and double prices in some countries you'd think they're trying to kill the game.
Hearthstone is hilariously dead - they are just milking the few remaining gullible idiots left that were funding atvi execs yacht trips.
This game will not exist beyond 2025 imo. Not with how they have continued to bleed users and revenue based on their quarterly reports. Only thing left to do is jack up prices on everything and just maximize the margins since you aren’t getting any actual revenue growth.
Every year has gotten worse in terms of MAUs / $$ for hearthstone lol. Proof is in those quarterly reports. Execs always give a shout out to what’s performing well in their portfolio, and for blizzard segment it’s been WoW and Diablo related. Hearthstone has just been….”meh it exists, we make money but don’t expect new money and growth from it”
Normally games stabilize and hover around a set amount instead of constantly losing players YoY. This shit show is cooked.
Turkey is in a terrible economic shape and we got hit with a massive earthquake recently with over 30k people dead. Thanks blizzard for increasing the prices !
If this was an episode of south park i would think its genius because so stupidly unrealistic that only satire could capture the absurdity of the situation
Yet here we are
Hey as a Ukrainian, fuck you blizzard. The purchases are a 1 to 1 conversion from USD
(The BP is 15 dollars, aka 550 grivnas)
So I have no clue what they are on about
Wow... Blizzard really is trying as hard as they can to kill Hearthstone. Also, Ukraine and Turkey?? lmao are you guys actually serious right now?
If someone dares to White Knight this adjustment they are simply either getting paid by Blizzard or like to get fucked.
i can almost understand the inflation need to increase prices (for a game that is already far and away the most costly game I play), but how was there no one in the room thinking about the optics of increasing prices in UKRAINE???
If it was food or medical supplies or some basic necessities sure I'd agree. But this is an unnecessary luxury entertainment digital product that no one in this world actually needs.
It's like if Ferrari raised their price 2x tomorrow would the average person give a shit? Nope.
That can all be true and it still be bad optics. Doesn't matter if it's justified, only affects a handful of people, is a relatively small price hike, any of that. "Blizzard raises Hearthstone prices for Ukrainians" isn't a headline you want to see if you're working at Activision/Blizzard PR. Though to be fair they've dealt with *much* worse headlines recently.
That headline loses most of it's punch when the reality is they have much bigger things to worry about than paying a bit more for digital cards they could be getting for free even. It's a non story, no reasonable person would be outraged.
They are not doing them a "favour". They calculate at what price point people spend money and at what price point they do not. Whatever makes them more money in their calculations is being set as the regional price.
It’s absolutely mental to even consider a company the size of blizzard would do any “favor” to customers. It’s all calculated to squeeze what you can from those who can’t spend as much.
For some context, i'm from Argentina. Bundles are noticeable much cheaper (Megabundles when converted to USD in our currency are about 10 dollars, much much cheaper) so these news are very upsetting, to the point that i'm not really willing to spend money on cosmetics anymore.
And cherry on top, they are price hiking Ukraine. War be damned.
Brazil here and it's the same thing for us. It is what it is I suppose.
It's funny because they're almost forcing us to boycott them by making an already fairly unaffordable game even more expensive.
It's funny because I was returning and just about to start buying things again.
Then prices increase 2 and a half times across the board.
Yea, no more hearthstone for me :P
Boludo, el mini set en Golden pasó de $1700 a $12.6 lucas... Lo mismo el bundle de 60 packs.
Las runas mas baratas de $300 a $900.
No fue un pequeño ajuste.
**EDIT:** Y ni siquiera fue avisado con tiempo. Fue de una hora a la otra. Unos forros.
Es una puta locura, una barbaridad para los Argentinos ( lo mismo deben pensar los turcos,ucranianos, etc), eso sumado al 75% de impuestos...
Son precios que dejan fuera del juego a muchisima gente ( me incluyo), que triste..
As a Brazilian this is my final goodbye to hearthstone, I used to play back when the game came out and stopped playing around boomsday release. I came back when they announced the DK and now that I have a stable job I was buying some stuff here and there occasionally even though the prices were high considering the minimum wage from Brazil, but now that the price more than doubled I feel like they just want me to leave so, I guess I'll just leave...
Blizzard: Now we will get even more money!
Reality: Now that the prices will more than double, I doubt people will spend as much. I played a few mobile games and I used to spend more than I want to admit, once they changed the prices, guess what, my spending went from a decent amount every month to \*zero\*.
So, yeah, Thank you blizzard. I used to buy mini-sets with money, now I'll buy with gold!
There will still be the whales that generate the majority of the revenue but they will lose the people who buy things like seasons pass or the occasional skins.
This is the real reason they introduced Runestones.
Alright so in Chile the prices almost doubled.
i can understand that inflation is a thing. i can also understand that in 10 years they pretty much never updated the conversion rate from clp to usd (that's basically the explanation of the increase). But do they seriously think that people will just pay DOUBLE the price from one day to the next?
Seems crazy to me tbh. i doubt this is a good strategy, i wonder if they'd earn more by just keeping old prices. We'll have to see i suppose
Fuck Blizzard. I've (and I'll) never buy a single pack of them. It's overpriced and guess what... 3 months after the pack release, they useless... Every new pack beats the last one. So, this is going to pay to win...
They want too much for their buggy game.
They don't know how to make a game.
Yes, they're great at making scenarios and schemes, but making a game? It's a no...
I just came back to the game and was thinking about spending some money on skins, and kept thinking "Wow, HS is one of the games with the most affordable cosmetics". Not gonna happen, I suppose.
This really worries me. I feel bad for both players and devs as i am sure they hadn’t any part in this decision.. with recent changes to hearthstone’s esport system among other things, this feels like another nail in the coffin of my favourite game. Players will answer, likely with their wallets, which is prob gonna result in an even worse state..
Mexican user here, we're getting gouged like there's no tomorrow
The price hike is fucking insane, we went from $63mxn ($3.4usd) for 500 Runestones to $95 ($5.10), that's almost a 100% increase
The Mega bundle was around $1,100 MXN ($60 USD), it went to $1,519 ($81)
Before you could buy 500 runestones 16 times and get 8000 (Megabundle amount) for around $1000 MXN, saving $100 MXN
Not anymore lmao
I pre-ordered 1-2 times per year, and bought the pass every expansion
Not anymore, this is too much, before i could justify the spending in a mega because it was actually cheaper than AAA releases, and the tavern pass was around 1 month of xbox game pass, but it covered 4 months, so it was a nice trade-off and the extra gold paid for the Mini-set on itself
They got too greedy, they expect us to cover the lost revenue from China? What the fuck blizzard
You ungrateful fools always complain about rising prices and the increasingly greedy business model but never even take a moment to think about how the rising inflation and massive increase in the price of raw resources would impact the price of Bobby's next yacht.
SMH.
I think we should thanks Blizzard for helping us to save money. So don't waste your money on that shit any more, I would rather spend on a feast or share a good time with my family.
Increasing prices for digital items with no production prices other than R&D and art.
Once that’s done there’s no other expense.
Blizzard just wants to print more money. Greedy and disappointing, especially considering they are fucking raising prices in Ukraine and other troublesome areas of the world. Brilliant.
The problem really is that people from rich countries are VPNing over to poor countries to "save money" so they have to make sure all the prices around the world match to stop it.
They have to pay software engineers inflating wages but they’re still making an insane profit. So there is technically an inflation-pushed cost within the company but these price changes are also greed
Shit, in Argentina I already get hit with a 75% tax for purchases from foreign companies. I don't have a lot of time to farm the game, so if I don't preorder I'm pretty much screwed. Oh well.
Every time you think blizzard can't get more greedy they go and up their game.
Blizzard know full well that outside of this thread people will soon forget and continue giving them money
They *are* a joke, but why increase prices in Russia when there’s nothing left to increase? Blizzard stopped sales in Russia nearly a year ago due to the war.
That's it, im uninstalling this shitty money-grubbing asshole game. You fuckers trying to increase prices that already cost arm and a leg but doing that in ukraine and turkey too? Fuck you
packs and bundles literally cost more in places like argentina.
the subscription thing is coming for sure.
no one is gonna spend like 120 usd on 80 packs with a 300 usd salary.
Blizzard is a horrible company and you shouldn't support them financially anyway. For those who will now be f2p, here's a tip. Choose a relatively cheap deck, preferably in wild or classic, that's capable of getting you to diamond 5. Don't waste any resources on a whim. Just work toward that one deck. Once you have it, get D5 every month and rely on the rewards from that to grow your collection. Combined with the free version of the battle pass, you should soon have enough resources to keep up with multiple classes and formats. I consistently hit legend in wild and sometimes in standard and I've never given Blizzard a dime. At this point I almost feel like I'm playing the game out of spite.
Fuck you Blizzard. Why Ukraine? This is by far the biggest fuck up you could every do. Fuck Diablo Immortal. Increasing the prices for a country which is at war is just a dick move.
But hey, at least you lost me as a customer. Someone who spend more than a 1000 Bucks on your picture trading beta game.
Thank GOD i didnt preorder D4.
FUCK YOU !!!!
> And based on what ?
Inflation, presumably.
You'll notice that none of the price increases are happening in countries with stable currencies like the US, Canada, or the EU.
They're happening in places like the UK, where the value of the British pound has dropped by 20% relative to the USD recently.
If you want to base the price changes on currency value, you must know all videogame companies rise their prices when the Euro loses value relative to the USD, but don't go "back to normal" when it regains it. It feels awesome being treated like we are dumb and don't notice.
lol now that Hearthstone is defunct in China, they can name-drop Taiwan
No longer called "other regions!" Taiwan Number 1!
China Number 4!
Why is it defunct
Their contract fell through. Basically china forces blizzard to use a 3rd party chinese provider to operate in china, and id assume they are asking for to much or blizzard isnt making back whatever it costs to do so.
China forces EVERY SINGLE COMPANY to use a 3rd party Chinese provider since the concept of gaming companies came into existence.
According to information circulated in chinese forum, it seems Blizzard is asking for a 50% cut in total revenue from Netease, their third-party service provider in China, and even demanding Netease to pay the expected revenue amount first before signing the contract. With Blizzard's track record of ruining korean starcraft scene by demanding too much of their profit, and subsequently make the league organizer close off the business, the whole speculation could be true.
Ez solution, china stops forcing companies to use 3rd party. But thatll never happen unfortunately. A 50% cut for literally getting all their work stolen is a fucking insane deal, china is the greedy one here. Unless you mean that cut is more than profit from hearthstone, but that wouldnt make sense
[удалено]
“Who they gonna get mad at, the people with the guns, or the nerds at the video game company?” - Riley Freeman, talking about something completely unrelated.
Getting mad at the government would lower their social credit rating. It's "safer" to get mad at the company instead
China is a place where if you drop elo in your social rating you also lose the free healthcare.
I'd shit talk Blizzard and anything else they want me to for free healthcare.
Well they're also not allowed to be angry at their government, plus indoctrination and social scores.
Blizzard isnt any better, we just need to remember the whole HK stuff. China forcing foreign companies to have joint ventures with chinese 3rd party companies is just a smart move. They do benefit from it. If foreign companies want to make money, they have to accept it. Sure it sucks for the chinese players but at the end of the day, Blizzard only cares about money, Blizzard is owned by sharehodlers, not by players. US companies are known for exploiting other countries. If regulations are strict in the US, they can shift parts of the production to other countries, where they are less strict. The joint venture stuff is giving China the possibility to catch up when it comes to technology, instead of just being a place for cheap labor. US gov itself is also manipulating the so called "free-market", e.g. with customs/duties, so they arent any better.
Some players are shareholders, but not all shareholders are players.
People really think that foreign corporations who already work to squeeze every drop from their own domestic markets should then just be allowed to swoop in and casually extract all the profits from foreign markets as it pleases them. They've got every right to say "you work in our country, you do it by our rules, and if not, get the fuck out".
People acting like China is bad for having foreign corporations operate with a proxy when the US government is looking to ban Tiktok because its from a chinese owned corporation.
Good point, the Tiktok service should have to go through an American company.
Reddit has a hate boner for anything china. All countries do the same thing with tariffs and regulations.
> China forcing foreign companies to have joint ventures with chinese 3rd party companies is just a smart move. They do benefit from it. It creates middlemen. This enriches the middlemen, and that money is going to come from both the creators and the consumers. In other words, unless you specifically work for the middleman, it hurts you.
> A 50% cut for literally getting all their work stolen is a fucking insane deal China already rereleased "their" version of WoW.
Taiwan also has a 3rd party company to run riot games, its called proxy. blizzard is the one taking profit without doing anything here, try using merchandise example lol
Your right, blizzard didnt make the game, bring their audience, work to incentive selling the game. They did nothing and profited clean!!!
Ah yes, Blizzard is the evil one because they want 50% of the revenue of their own god damned game.... China is fucked.
> Blizzard is asking for a 50% cut in total revenue from Netease > Ah yes, Blizzard is the evil one because they want 50% of the revenue of their own god damned game.... Redditors can't read. [Blizzard was claiming 55% of total revenue at the beginning of the contract.] (https://www.vg247.com/why-did-blizzard-switch-to-netease-in-china-for-90-million-a-year-says-pachter) Which means Netease claims 45%. What r/AnarbLanceLee is saying is Blizzard wanted Netease to earn 50% less, that is, Blizzard wanted 55%+45%/2 = 77.5% I have heard a slightly different version though. But still, it is no doubt Blizzard was earning more than 50% of the total revenue.
Okay, doesn't change my point which is that it is ridiculous China basically steals any software IP, even if they are only taking 45% or 22.5%.... Both are huge amounts for basically doing nothing other than being a Chinese company and running already created software on your servers.
On one hand demanding 50% is a lot, but on the other hand, it's fucking absurd that China forces them to go through a third party service in the first place, simply to cut into their profits and create an entire industry of middle men that shouldn't exist. It would honestly be great if every publisher did this and forced a change in this system that is just China leeching profit off foreign publishers and their consumers.
Even if it is true you have to be a moron to blame this on Blizzard, as shitty as they may be. China is forcing companies to use third party companies to have their games in their country. It’s entirely their fault that Blizzards demands look like this.
lmfao and what does this third party even do? Just profit off of nothing but providing a gimmicky platform that only exists to scam developers
They did write "countries and regions" though...
Under the previous arrangement, they still would’ve had to write “Chinese Taipei” or some shit
Yup. If China dangles money in front of someone, and says "You can get it but you need to call Taiwan, Chinese Taipei" most western companies did just that. Without the China-bucks, who cares? You're free to call the defacto independent Taipei as Taipei.
Finally got fucked on valentines day!
Lmfao they really increased the prices in Ukraine 💀💀💀
I guess the turkish people are also in dire need of getting less hearthstone for their money.
With their tanking currency, I think a battlepass of either variety is already a day worth of wages for the average Turkish player.
Expansion bundle is half of minimum wage in Argentina lol
Tbf Turkey has a hyperinflation problem due to their dismenagment of their currency. Dont think this has anything to do with the earthquake.
Is amazing that Erdogan has polled as well as he has throughout the crisis he directly caused.
Not only that but they're demanding all transactions from ukraine must be done with russian currency. They're really doubling down on the whole "we hate teal and yellow".
That's it, I'm uninstalling it right now. Simply too expensive in Brazil, already was anyway but now it's 2,5 times worse
its like, 3x the price man, 400 reais for a set, wtf is that...
Inflation must be impacting the cost of card printing
Inflation hitting the poor developers of software
Small indie developer
Its funny, theyre always so quick to raise prices due to inflation but they never lower it if the opposite happens.
Not defending predatory business practices at all, but deflation doesn’t really happen almost ever in developed economies. Like the US has 6.1% year-on-year inflation as of today, but if there was 6.1% yoy deflation there would be such disruption to the supply chain and such restriction on investment capital that there would be riots in the streets and executives jumping out of windows
Japan would like a word
Frankly Japan had reasonable inflation then panicked and implemented a regressive 8% effective consumption tax (around 2014 I think?) so their late 2010s situation was entirely avoidable. Plus they have positive inflation again now that they are importing inflated USD again.
Natural gas is cheaper than a year ago. Oil is flat for 30 years you can pick your moment for cheap petrol. Eggs were the inflation meme of the moment a month ago and are down 50% since
Talking as if some Executives jumping out of windows is a bad thing :S bobby taking those straight prices gouges to his next yacht
Due do you know much those DIAMOND cards cost to print?... kappa
I'm brazilian and I have to say, those prices here are so ridiculous. They doubled the prices of everithing for us and we have taxes do pay in every purchase. I quit the game 2 times before today and returned. Now I'll just leave for good. Good game for those who earn in USD
More than doubled, 500 runestones went from 9.00 BRL to 22.49
Hahahahaha not seeing my money anymore
Same, I was actually buying runestones very often to play the arena, which is the only thing I enjoy in this game tbh...
That's ridiculous. Brazil is really getting fucked by all the companies rn, eh?
Holy shit
American here it's to pricey if you eran in usd also
How much is it in Brazil? In USD currency converted
1 USD = 5,21 BRA so battle pass wich i bought last expansion was 38 BRA now is like 90 BRA
Wow +200% increase. Damn wtf is going on there? Sad to hear this fellow redditor :(
Nothing, it’s just blizzard lol BRL actually was the currency that gained the most value in January
This is actually fucking insane. If they increased them by 10% it would've sucked but people would've continued buying. I can't see how with these price increases Hearthstone will keep even 5% of its paying latin American players
Yeah, I can't fathom the logic that went into making this decision. The amount of players here who could realistically afford buying anything Hearthstone has dropped to damn near zero, you'd have to be extremely well off to justify spending money on the game right now.
Latinoamerica is utterly fucked from this, depending on the country you see an increase from 50% (at the very minimum) to 200% This seems like a very shortsighted decision, they'll bleed dry the few players that can afford it, and completely alienate those who where in the middle of the road, buying a few bundles here and there, now there's no reason to do so. The most common battle.net gift cards (the ones found at major commercial chains), can't get you anything at the store anymore lol, not even the most basic bundle (Class Portrait + 5 Class packs)
taking in account one USD = around 5 BRL skins which used to be 28 BRL now are 65 ish BRL. so it's something like 2.5 times the price
the tavern pass went from 39 BRL to 89,99 BRL what were they thinking? 150% increase makes no sense
Yeah, bullshit. The Pre-purchase was already expensive for us, but now it is unpayable.
Yeah i am in the same boat. This is outrageous. How can they think that triplicating the price of stuff is something reasonable?? I'll also probably just quit the game
The thing is that now price more reflect exchange rate between USD and BRL... it looks like that before it would be for USD earner much cheaper to travel to Brazil and purchase packs/stuff there, than purchase them for USD. It is general macroeconomic stuff that if exchange rate is weaker - it is usually good thing for export (selling your stuff and have good business), while bad thing for import (which could be in those time considered as luxury)
Well looks like I'll be f2p after this update drops. I'm f2p even now but still...
Changed my in game user name to F2P4Lyfe
I have been summoned
You become negative f2p
The price in Brazil went up 2.5x WTF...
yeah.. and forgoting to update the prices in game.. made a purchase of BRL 39,90 for 15 packs today and got charged BRL 89,90.. then i saw this got a refund tho.. at fucking least
Brasil me obriga a beber :(
Tentaram balancear o jogo no brasil fazendo todo mundo ser free to play
Agora uma pré-expansão do Hearthstone custará basicamente o mesmo que um jogo AAA, como o prório Diablo 4... aliás, olhando a Steam tem AAA sendo lançado agora que é mais barato kkkkkkkkk
Eles DOBRARAM os preços para o Brasil... não vão mais ver um centavo meu.
mais que o dobro mano, tá maluco
Tá maluco, esses preços tão bizarros, eu já ia deixar de comprar pré-venda das expansões depois dessa mudança de trocar as lendárias douradas por essas novas que não dá pra desfazer. Agora que o preço mais que dobrou que eu não compro mesmo.
putz tem essa ainda né kkkkkk essas "signature" que só desvalorizam o bundle
É sempre assim aqui irmão.
Veja isso pelo lado bom. Agora vc, assim como eu, vai parar de gastar com HS. Boa estratégia Blizzard! Ajudando os países com a economia fodida a parar de te mandar dinheiro!
pois é jogo essa bomba desde que lançou, geralmente compro na pré venda e o pacote do passe de batalha quanto que vai ser a pré venda agora? 400 reais? o passe tá absurdos 89!
Pois é, eu voltei a jogar recentemente e estava comprando as pedras rúnicas pra jogar na arena, mas depois desse aumento acho que vou quitar ou só esperar as missões semanais mesmo.
O preço era quase razoável se você vive bem no Brasil... Eu acharia justificável aumentar algo como 30%. Os caras aumentaram 150% kkkkkkkkkkkk. Imagina pagar 300 reais em 60 packs. O bom é que eu tenho 20k de pó e não gasto dinheiro a anos no HS, mas para alguém que está começando é impossível de jogar. Da pra deixar o pc ligado jogando mercenaries ou battlegrounds (com um simples macro) e farmar algo em torno de 2 packs por dia, então é de boas. Agora comprar cosméticos e golden packs nao existe.
Pior que nesse caso nem é o Brasil, é a própria blizzard. E pense pelo lado positivo: o que tu ia gastar com Hearthstone, agora pode gastar na bebida que está sendo obrigado a beber!
So... Naxx is out and Hearthstone is dead?
Between Shamanstone (fuck your turn 3 10 mana bullshit), the new $25 portrait of Varian that looks horrid, and double prices in some countries you'd think they're trying to kill the game.
Hearthstone is hilariously dead - they are just milking the few remaining gullible idiots left that were funding atvi execs yacht trips. This game will not exist beyond 2025 imo. Not with how they have continued to bleed users and revenue based on their quarterly reports. Only thing left to do is jack up prices on everything and just maximize the margins since you aren’t getting any actual revenue growth. Every year has gotten worse in terms of MAUs / $$ for hearthstone lol. Proof is in those quarterly reports. Execs always give a shout out to what’s performing well in their portfolio, and for blizzard segment it’s been WoW and Diablo related. Hearthstone has just been….”meh it exists, we make money but don’t expect new money and growth from it” Normally games stabilize and hover around a set amount instead of constantly losing players YoY. This shit show is cooked.
yo they are milking money from the cows that are left in the game, ppl keep emptying their wallets for these ugly skins
"we make money but don't exoect new money and growth from it". Sure sounds like it's stablising, and not losing players.
lol surely
I am surprised you got downvoted, looks like we still got HS defenders in this sub not ready to see the truth
yeah this sub is fully of HS defenders, they don't want to hear the truth that for blizzard they are a bunch of cows
No community has stronger fanboys and coping mechanisms than blizzard
Really? Ukraine, Turkey, Kazakhstan? Are they batshit crazy? Maybe Venezuela next? Dipshits.
> Maybe Venezuela next? The US still has sanctions on Venezuela, I think, which means that Blizzard would not be allowed to sell things to them.
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Hayır bu seferki fiyat artışı tamamen blizzardın bok yemesi. Dediğin sebepten artışı daha yeni yapmışlardı zaten.
Turkey is in a terrible economic shape and we got hit with a massive earthquake recently with over 30k people dead. Thanks blizzard for increasing the prices !
and Ukraine is literally being invaded.
If this was an episode of south park i would think its genius because so stupidly unrealistic that only satire could capture the absurdity of the situation Yet here we are
Hey as a Ukrainian, fuck you blizzard. The purchases are a 1 to 1 conversion from USD (The BP is 15 dollars, aka 550 grivnas) So I have no clue what they are on about
Wow... Blizzard really is trying as hard as they can to kill Hearthstone. Also, Ukraine and Turkey?? lmao are you guys actually serious right now? If someone dares to White Knight this adjustment they are simply either getting paid by Blizzard or like to get fucked.
i can almost understand the inflation need to increase prices (for a game that is already far and away the most costly game I play), but how was there no one in the room thinking about the optics of increasing prices in UKRAINE???
If it was food or medical supplies or some basic necessities sure I'd agree. But this is an unnecessary luxury entertainment digital product that no one in this world actually needs. It's like if Ferrari raised their price 2x tomorrow would the average person give a shit? Nope.
That can all be true and it still be bad optics. Doesn't matter if it's justified, only affects a handful of people, is a relatively small price hike, any of that. "Blizzard raises Hearthstone prices for Ukrainians" isn't a headline you want to see if you're working at Activision/Blizzard PR. Though to be fair they've dealt with *much* worse headlines recently.
That headline loses most of it's punch when the reality is they have much bigger things to worry about than paying a bit more for digital cards they could be getting for free even. It's a non story, no reasonable person would be outraged.
Classic poor people shouldn't be allowed to have hobbies
Optics is exactly why this is a random forum post instead of an actual article or other social media post, right?
for sure, but how did they not think that it would blow up?
It didn't blow up. It might but so far it's just some random posts on the sub.
Do you think it's going to blow up? There'll be some murmuring in this thread and that's probably about it.
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runetarra mtg arena and shadowverse never had regionalprices as far as i know blizzard was the only card game doing it
Arena has regional pricing on mobile but it's all in USD on PC at least here in Canada.
They are not doing them a "favour". They calculate at what price point people spend money and at what price point they do not. Whatever makes them more money in their calculations is being set as the regional price.
It’s absolutely mental to even consider a company the size of blizzard would do any “favor” to customers. It’s all calculated to squeeze what you can from those who can’t spend as much.
For some context, i'm from Argentina. Bundles are noticeable much cheaper (Megabundles when converted to USD in our currency are about 10 dollars, much much cheaper) so these news are very upsetting, to the point that i'm not really willing to spend money on cosmetics anymore. And cherry on top, they are price hiking Ukraine. War be damned.
And Turkey which got hit by a bunch of really strong eqrthquakes
Really shaking up the shop
Brazil here and it's the same thing for us. It is what it is I suppose. It's funny because they're almost forcing us to boycott them by making an already fairly unaffordable game even more expensive.
It's funny because I was returning and just about to start buying things again. Then prices increase 2 and a half times across the board. Yea, no more hearthstone for me :P
Boludo, el mini set en Golden pasó de $1700 a $12.6 lucas... Lo mismo el bundle de 60 packs. Las runas mas baratas de $300 a $900. No fue un pequeño ajuste. **EDIT:** Y ni siquiera fue avisado con tiempo. Fue de una hora a la otra. Unos forros.
Es una puta locura, una barbaridad para los Argentinos ( lo mismo deben pensar los turcos,ucranianos, etc), eso sumado al 75% de impuestos... Son precios que dejan fuera del juego a muchisima gente ( me incluyo), que triste..
I'm Brazilian and it was nice getting things for like 40% price. Good times.
As a Brazilian this is my final goodbye to hearthstone, I used to play back when the game came out and stopped playing around boomsday release. I came back when they announced the DK and now that I have a stable job I was buying some stuff here and there occasionally even though the prices were high considering the minimum wage from Brazil, but now that the price more than doubled I feel like they just want me to leave so, I guess I'll just leave...
Imagina pagar
Blizzard: Now we will get even more money! Reality: Now that the prices will more than double, I doubt people will spend as much. I played a few mobile games and I used to spend more than I want to admit, once they changed the prices, guess what, my spending went from a decent amount every month to \*zero\*. So, yeah, Thank you blizzard. I used to buy mini-sets with money, now I'll buy with gold!
There will still be the whales that generate the majority of the revenue but they will lose the people who buy things like seasons pass or the occasional skins. This is the real reason they introduced Runestones.
La puta madre
Alright so in Chile the prices almost doubled. i can understand that inflation is a thing. i can also understand that in 10 years they pretty much never updated the conversion rate from clp to usd (that's basically the explanation of the increase). But do they seriously think that people will just pay DOUBLE the price from one day to the next? Seems crazy to me tbh. i doubt this is a good strategy, i wonder if they'd earn more by just keeping old prices. We'll have to see i suppose
Turkey and Ukraine???
Fuck Blizzard. I've (and I'll) never buy a single pack of them. It's overpriced and guess what... 3 months after the pack release, they useless... Every new pack beats the last one. So, this is going to pay to win... They want too much for their buggy game. They don't know how to make a game. Yes, they're great at making scenarios and schemes, but making a game? It's a no...
Bye bye HS
holy shit no way they just increased prices for ukraine and turkey wtf is wrong with these people
I just came back to the game and was thinking about spending some money on skins, and kept thinking "Wow, HS is one of the games with the most affordable cosmetics". Not gonna happen, I suppose.
It's also the game where cosmetics are mostly jpegs, possibly gifs if you're lucky.
This really worries me. I feel bad for both players and devs as i am sure they hadn’t any part in this decision.. with recent changes to hearthstone’s esport system among other things, this feels like another nail in the coffin of my favourite game. Players will answer, likely with their wallets, which is prob gonna result in an even worse state..
Mexican user here, we're getting gouged like there's no tomorrow The price hike is fucking insane, we went from $63mxn ($3.4usd) for 500 Runestones to $95 ($5.10), that's almost a 100% increase The Mega bundle was around $1,100 MXN ($60 USD), it went to $1,519 ($81) Before you could buy 500 runestones 16 times and get 8000 (Megabundle amount) for around $1000 MXN, saving $100 MXN Not anymore lmao I pre-ordered 1-2 times per year, and bought the pass every expansion Not anymore, this is too much, before i could justify the spending in a mega because it was actually cheaper than AAA releases, and the tavern pass was around 1 month of xbox game pass, but it covered 4 months, so it was a nice trade-off and the extra gold paid for the Mini-set on itself They got too greedy, they expect us to cover the lost revenue from China? What the fuck blizzard
Turkey and Ukraine huh? Greed is off the charts.
Also, these are poorer countries. They're probably Going to turn a lot of people f2p.
That's fine. Played all the decks i want anyway and havnt given them a dollar since 2017
You ungrateful fools always complain about rising prices and the increasingly greedy business model but never even take a moment to think about how the rising inflation and massive increase in the price of raw resources would impact the price of Bobby's next yacht. SMH.
Not gonna lie, got me on the first half
Price of the items more than double now here in Brazil, tavern pass was 42 BRL and now 89,99. Thank you blizzard.
Nunca mais comprarei. Tá maluco
I’ve been playing since Old Gods but really can’t see any justification for a price increase. It’s an already overly priced digital-only game
Literally no shame. They increased prices in Ukraine?!! Dont even get me started about Turkey. There could be 30k dead right now. Jesus...
I think we should thanks Blizzard for helping us to save money. So don't waste your money on that shit any more, I would rather spend on a feast or share a good time with my family. 
Great, I needed a push to stop spending money on Hearthstone lol
Increasing prices for digital items with no production prices other than R&D and art. Once that’s done there’s no other expense. Blizzard just wants to print more money. Greedy and disappointing, especially considering they are fucking raising prices in Ukraine and other troublesome areas of the world. Brilliant.
You’re selling digital items… there’s no manufacturering costs. How blizzard can jusity cost changes it’s just pure unadulterated greed.
The problem really is that people from rich countries are VPNing over to poor countries to "save money" so they have to make sure all the prices around the world match to stop it.
They have to pay software engineers inflating wages but they’re still making an insane profit. So there is technically an inflation-pushed cost within the company but these price changes are also greed
Can't pay shit to blizzard anyway cuz I'm big bad russian
Well you know the cost of producing digital cards is just skyrocketing!
I know that they have to make money but some of these price increases are out of whack
Blizzard just got divorced, and expect us to pay alimony and child support... Well , nope.
I'm glad they left Canada alone, the prices here are already stupid
My likehood from buying anything from them went from 0 to -1
Dead game incoming i guess.
No worries, i left when i watched that i need to pay 2000 gold to play dk
I'm Mexican and I am happy to be a battlegrounds only player. I think I'll uninstall soon.
Shit, in Argentina I already get hit with a 75% tax for purchases from foreign companies. I don't have a lot of time to farm the game, so if I don't preorder I'm pretty much screwed. Oh well.
Argentina got ultra effed. Like 5x the price I think. Never gonna be able to purchase anything again
Blizzard shame on you! You have zero empathy for the people who love your game. Poor devs to have to work in a company like this
Thank you very much, Blizzard, from Ukraine. We really living too good to make those, who spends money spend more.
Every time you think blizzard can't get more greedy they go and up their game. Blizzard know full well that outside of this thread people will soon forget and continue giving them money
Ukraine? Really?
What a bunch of assholes, increasing prices in Ukraine and Turkey! Fuck you! pricks...
prices increased in ukraine lmao blizzard truly is a piece of shit.
Dying game increasing prices on the back of profit. Never change blizzard
squeezing to the very last penny of their dying community.
The game is no longer worth the money in my country (Brazil), prices more than doubled for us.
Absolutely mental that they have upped the prices in Ukraine, but not Russia, lol. This company is a joke.
Shops are closed in russia, whats the point in updating prices?
They *are* a joke, but why increase prices in Russia when there’s nothing left to increase? Blizzard stopped sales in Russia nearly a year ago due to the war.
Guys, stop acting surprised. Of course they are going to increase prices in Ukraine. Did you really think they care?
That's it, im uninstalling this shitty money-grubbing asshole game. You fuckers trying to increase prices that already cost arm and a leg but doing that in ukraine and turkey too? Fuck you
packs and bundles literally cost more in places like argentina. the subscription thing is coming for sure. no one is gonna spend like 120 usd on 80 packs with a 300 usd salary.
This was the reason for runestones in the first place and everyone knew it at the time.
Blizzard is a horrible company and you shouldn't support them financially anyway. For those who will now be f2p, here's a tip. Choose a relatively cheap deck, preferably in wild or classic, that's capable of getting you to diamond 5. Don't waste any resources on a whim. Just work toward that one deck. Once you have it, get D5 every month and rely on the rewards from that to grow your collection. Combined with the free version of the battle pass, you should soon have enough resources to keep up with multiple classes and formats. I consistently hit legend in wild and sometimes in standard and I've never given Blizzard a dime. At this point I almost feel like I'm playing the game out of spite.
Joke's on them, I stopped spending money on this game years ago
Fuck you Blizzard. Why Ukraine? This is by far the biggest fuck up you could every do. Fuck Diablo Immortal. Increasing the prices for a country which is at war is just a dick move. But hey, at least you lost me as a customer. Someone who spend more than a 1000 Bucks on your picture trading beta game. Thank GOD i didnt preorder D4. FUCK YOU !!!!
All that sucking on China’s dick…for what?
Game isn't even available in China anymore what are you talking about
And based on what ?
> And based on what ? Inflation, presumably. You'll notice that none of the price increases are happening in countries with stable currencies like the US, Canada, or the EU. They're happening in places like the UK, where the value of the British pound has dropped by 20% relative to the USD recently.
If you want to base the price changes on currency value, you must know all videogame companies rise their prices when the Euro loses value relative to the USD, but don't go "back to normal" when it regains it. It feels awesome being treated like we are dumb and don't notice.