Hearthstone makes $20m a month, report claims

Blizzard’s collectible card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is making $20m a month, according to a report from SuperData.

Monthly revenues for the title were said to have jumped 31 per cent after it was released on smartphones in April this year. Hearthstone has more than 20m monthly active users across both PC and mobile.

Overall, card games are expected to generate $1.3bn in revenues this year. Of that, $532m is expected to be made from mobile.

The report also notes that PC-based players are the most loyal when it comes to card games, spending 11 per cent more than their counterparts on other platforms. Just under half of collectible card game players, 46 per cent, play on multiple platforms.

“Digital card games have evolved,” said SuperData CEO Joost van Dreunen

“Previously, smartphones were the realm of relatively simple card games like Rage of Bahamut and Marvel: War of Heroes. Highly-complex digital collectible card games, or CCGs, modeled after tabletop games tended to exclusively target PC and tablet players.

"The success of Hearthstone on smartphones shows that the most dedicated CCG players want to play their games on the go too. As digital card gamers grow to expect seamless play across devices, publishers will need to rethink their game designs to account for players’ diverse tastes and different play habits across PCs, smartphones and tablets.”