Blizzard Downsizes Hearthstone’s Competitive Program, Downsizes Prizes Too

Hearthstone hasn’t exactly been Blizzard’s top priority for a while now, and it kinda shows. The player base isn’t as big as it was starting out and the esports scene is smaller too. Now, it looks like it’s going to become even smaller – on an official level.

Today, Blizzard announced its plans for the tenth year of competitive Hearthstone, both the Masters and Battlegrounds Lobby Legends. In a post on the Hearthstone site they revealed that after evaluating the state of the program – looking at things like player interest, the “ever-changing production landscape”, and general sustainability, they’ve decided to make things a bit smaller. Although, they promise some level of excitement.

For the 2023 season, Blizzard will be hosting a total of seven events. Three of these will be the Masters Tour Seasonal Championships which will lead into the 2023 World Championship. There will also be three standalone Battlegrounds: Lobby Legends tournaments. And yeah, it can all be caught on Twitch.

To qualify for the events, players will need to earn points by progressing in the Ladders over three-month seasons. The sixteen top Ladder players based on competitive points will compete in the Masters Tour and Lobby Legends. The breakdown is as follows:

As the competitive scene is being shrunk, that means the prize pool isn’t exactly gigantic either. Although, it’s still a decent bit of money. Each Lobby Legends will have a $50,000 prize pool. While the 2023 World Championship will have a total prize pool of $500,000. It’s not League or Dota money, but it’s still something.

Note: Activision Blizzard is still under investigation by the state of California for serious harassment charges. CEO Bobby Kotick is alleged to have known about such actions within his company – and performed some himself – and shielded the perpetrators from consequences.