We believe that the current price and incentive structure of Hearthstone is both predatory and discriminatory. Additionally, we also believe that the current card pack system used to purchase game main content encourages gambling due to its excessive use of unfair randomness. We argue these practices are detrimental to the players and the community, and we ask that Blizzard-Activision quickly overhaul Hearthstone pricing and reward mechanics to de-emphasize unhealthy behaviors and ensure that players have fair access to the game content and events.

Before listing the proposed changes, it’s important to understand the reasons for this petition as well as the urgency of these requests.

A Hearthstone expansion is made of about 160 cards that have different rarity.  Blizzard-Activision release three expansions per year. Players use cards from various expansions that synergize well together to create decks and play against each other. The most powerful cards are called legendaries. The latest expansion released in November 2020 features 24 legendaries.

To get access to a given expansion cards, Blizzard-Activision requires players to purchase loot boxes called card packs for that specific expansion that award cards at random. Pack cost $2.99 or 100 gold (in-game currency). This form of content delivery structure is  problematic for two reasons: 

1.  The loot box system is heavily skewed against the players as packs dole out the missing cards at very low drop rates (2.5% for the legendary cards).
2. Even if the player gets a legendary card, the system offers no guarantee that the player will get the one they are looking for, or that at least can be used with cards they already own.

Additionally Blizzard offers players to pre-purchase bundles when the expansion is announced. The standard bundle cost $49.99 and the premium bundle (mega pack) cost $79.99. While those bundles are priced like fully fledged video games, they don’t allow players to access the expansion full content. Instead buyers are given the aforementioned card packs (loot boxes) that ultimately will only give players access to a fraction of the content. For example the premium bundle which contains 85 card packs will only allow players on average to collect 20% (5/24) of the legendary cards. Those statistics apply to the last two expansions at least.

The way Blizzard-Activision grants access to Hearthstone core content runs counter to established game industry best practices which ensure that the base content of a game is made available with the basic version of the game and that premium versions only offer additional cosmetic items, and non-essential content [see 1​, 2 for recent examples). This makes playing Hearthstone prohibitively expensive, as it requires players to pay about $500 (conservative estimate) per expansion to own most of the cards. This is roughly 10 times the price of the other video-game on the market. 

Furthermore, given that Blizzard-Activision releases three expansions per year,  it is within reason to consider a Hearthstone expansion being akin to a DLC. This  makes the price gap even more staggering, given that DLC are usually priced between $29 and $39.

To make matters worse, the new in-game reward system put forth by Blizzard-Activision as part of the last expansion further encourages players to gamble with real money to gain access to the game content by slowing down the earning rate of in-game currency (gold) that could be used to buy card-packs. The new reward system also unfairly restricts access to in-game currency not rewarding alternative game activities such as completing achievements that are not tied to new content.

Additionally, to further incentivize players to buy packs, Blizzard-Activision makes the ability to recycle cards to get new ones prohibitively expensive by only returning at most 25% of the value of the card when players recycle (disenchant) them. To put things in perspective even Casinos return at least 80% of their wagers to the players.

Last but not least Blizzard-Activision appears to leverage its opaque influencers/streamers partnership program as a means to incentivize the most visible members of the community to stay silent on these issues. The most visible aspect of this program’s discriminatory behavior are high value tournaments, such as the upcoming invitational tournament, which don’t publish a standardized, rigorous, and transparent set of qualification criteria. This marginalizes a huge part of the streamer community, and results in only the inclusion of a small and cherry-picked set of participants.  As a result,  white, male streamers are being overwhelmingly represented in the upcoming tournament​ despite the fact that the Hearthstone community and its streamers are incredibly diverse.

Those issues that incentivize players to pay significantly more than the industry standards for accessing Hearthstone latest content are particularly disheartening in the light of the huge profits posted by  Blizzard-Activision and the hardship faced by many hearthstone players and streamers due to the pandemic. 

This why we are requesting that Blizzard-Activision immediately does the right thing for the community, and implement the following changes to Hearthstone:

• The randomness of the packs must be reduced to be fair and fun. A proposed baseline is one epic every three packs and one legendary every five packs assuming the (gold) price per pack remains unchanged.
• The recycling system (disenchanting) should be changed such that players can recycle core cards at a fair rate. The proposed target is 90% of the card value:  to avoid the fact that players can recycle an extension to another indefinitely, a reasonable recycling limit is acceptable. For example, the system could be structured such that standard cards can only be acquired by recycling other standard cards.
• The standard expansion bundle price must be inline with industry pricing and offer at least 80% of the expansion’s cards.
• The Premium bundle and the Battle Pass, following industry best practices, should focus on offering items which are cosmetic or non-essential to the gameplay (e.g golden cards).
• Blizzard-Activision should give to all players the expansion key cards so they aren't left out due to their inability to pay. For example, for the current expansion Blizzard should provide the four Old Gods legendary cards as well as a few supporting cards to every player to test the new mechanics.
• Blizzard-Activision should provide players with a way to experiment with cards without having to pay the full expansion price upfront. As an example, a set of competitive decks that rotate every few weeks could be provided to all players for free.
• The in-game reward system should reward all playstyles, not only those tied to buying new paid content. It should also offer players a clear path to acquire the core content they want. For example, each achievement (regardless of its game mode) should fairly award the same amount of experience based on its difficulty, not the game mode or the cards used to complete it.
• The in-game progression system must be designed to not be exploitative and should not attempt to increase revenue by requiring increasingly excessive time commitments to progress. Instead, the reward system should solely be designed to improve the gameplay quality and give players a sense of accomplishment.
• Blizzard-Activision should ensure that all core content can always be bought with in-game currency to give players choice between paying or spending more time playing.
• Blizzard-Activision should disclose which players/streamers/influencers benefit from free promotional content, remuneration and invitation as well as the criteria that were used to select them. Additionally Blizzard-Activision  should offer a clear, fair and transparent path for any streamers/influencers to apply for those partnerships.

Additionally we expect Blizzard-Activision to retroactively fix the issues with the current game by:

• Awarding packs/cards to people who purchased the bundles this year for at least the last three extensions so they get access to 80% of the current content.
• Awarding players additional cosmetic content based on this year purchase history as a sign of good faith.
• Awarding all players a significant amount of in-game currency as a sign of good faith and an invitation to come back.

We’re writing this petition because we care deeply about Hearthstone and want Blizzard-Activision to enact the changes needed to have a healthy, stable, and diverse community where no one is left out. It is our hope that Blizzard-Activision will quickly take into account our request for change and ensure the bright future that Hearthstone deserves.

The Hearthstone community