Blizzard put out a surprising notice that the Duels game mode in Hearthstone is getting axed.

As we think about the future of Hearthstone and where the team can best focus their efforts, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue support for the Duels Mode. We do not have plans for any further scheduled updates for Duels, and the Mode itself is scheduled to be removed from the Hearthstone client in April 2024.

This change will allow us to shift our resources to where we feel they will have the most impact, including Traditional Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, and more. To that end, Battlegrounds Duos is scheduled for an upcoming Battlegrounds patch, and we’re trying out some Duels Treasures in our next Arena season—more details soon.

My feelings on this are… complicated.

First, the introduction of Duels was the deathknell of the content I actually enjoyed the most in Hearthstone: the Dungeon Runs. Those were repeatable PvE solo content largely on par with Slay the Spire in fun. It would not surprise me, if it were possible to calculate specifically, that I spent 200+ hours playing Dalaran Heist alone. But when Blizzard rolled out the Duels game mode and marketed it as PvP Dungeon Runs, the writing was on the wall. We ended up getting shit like “Book of Heroes” PvE content, but you couldn’t craft your decks or have much agency in completing it.

Also, Duels as originally monetized, was incredibly malicious. You were offered a random selection of heroes when first entering, then offered three hero powers for that hero, but two of those hero powers were locked behind “achievements” within your collection, like having 20 epics unlocked from a recent expansion. Then there was a third choice of signature treasure card, which most were again locked behind achievements. While there was mercifully an option to play Casual for free, the primary mode cost gold/cash just like an Arena run (with similar prizes). And, yeah, even though I always played Duels for free, I did also spend dust crafting otherwise useless epic cards to unlock some of the hero powers/other cards, so Blizzard did get cash out of the economy in a roundabout way.

For the record, Blizzard did end up changing things within Duels and unlocking everything for everyone eventually. Whether that was for marketing reasons or the simple fact that they’d have riots on their hands if players had to craft cards from 3+ expansions ago to stay current within the game mode, who can say.

What we can say though is that Blizzard is apparently in a period of… consolidation. Classic? Removed. Duels? Removed. Mercenaries? Still exists, but has been sunsetted permanently. Twist? It is on a “scheduled” hiatus, but it is difficult to imagine the thought process behind introducing a completely new competitive format, selling literally brand new cards and decks, and then going on a break three months later.

Well, maybe it’s easier after seeing graphs like this:

Caveats abound here, of course. These are not “official” numbers and since the data comes exclusively from players with the Firestone overlay mod installed, it’s not representative of the overall playerbase. Hell, I don’t even use Firestone (Hearthstone Deck Tracker for me). But… yeah. There’s Standard, Battlegrounds, and Arena up at the top, an enormous gap down to Wild – a format that Blizzard literally can’t kill without total collapse – and then, well, all the rest. Duels has a respectful showing there, but it’s also a format that requires constant upkeep and maintenance since every expansion set could radically imbalance the mode based on off-the-wall interactions. Twist basically doesn’t exist, and this was before the hiatus. Not a great look.

Look, we all get it. Corporations goin’ to corporate. It’s fun to imagine Bobby Kotick personally flushing these modes and now that he’s gone it’ll be rainbows and sunshine. But I doubt it. There has apparently been a lot of shuffling of designers over on the Hearthstone team, and whomever is still in charge is no Ben Brode or Ghostcrawler in the communication/hype-man department. And that makes me suspect that we may end up getting less spaghetti on the wall instead of more. Reminds me of the Google graveyard of apps in how they axed things like Reader (RIP) and now seem to exclusively focus on inserting four ads in my Gmail account instead. Classic enshitification.

So, yeah, kinda sad about Duels. If this allowed them to get back to Dungeons Runs or similar PvE content, that’d be great, but it won’t. I’m playing a lot of Battlegrounds actually, so I’m still in the ecosystem, and I do enjoy certain Brawl weeks, but the end of my interest may be nigh.

Which may be just as well – after more than 10 years, I have other shit I need to do.