Hearthstone’s Game Director Leaving Blizzard

When it comes to Hearthstone, it is quite rare that there is some bad news regarding our favorite card game. However, this time, we are sad to share the news that the game’s director August Dean Ayala is leaving Blizzard after working there for eleven years.

Image Credits | August Dean Ayala (Twitter)

Who is August Dean Ayala?

Joining Blizzard in 2011, Ayala never thought that he would go from QA testing for World of Warcraft all the way to designing some of the most incredible Hearthstone expansions, including Murder at Castle Nathria, which was the last he worked on.

Before he became the game’s director, he first got the position of the game designer in the legendary Team 5 at Blizzard in 2014. Since then, his job was to design, balance, and test out all the new cards that were released in expansions since, and he also worked on some adventures and, of course, matchmaking.

Naturally, even if he was quite good at balancing the game, we all know that the best Hearthstone players always found a way to find something that is a bit too strong. Luckily, in the past few years, Team 5 did quite a decent job at fixing those cards in patches.

Not everything was perfect

Hearthstone certainly has a lot of positives when it comes to Team 5, but there are also some questionable things about the game, and the primary focus is monetization. There are lots of players who haven’t spent a dime on the game. Still, selling a single card for $25 seems unreasonable.

While that happened only once, Blizzard seems to have learned their lesson on that one, and they have actually been giving out quite a lot of packs to those who decide to return to the game. They are giving up to 150 packs to returning players; their value is quite close to $200 and is more than enough to create many new best Hearthstone esports moments if returning players chase competitive play.

At the moment, it is unknown who is going to take over Dean Ayala’s position, but we surely hope that the next game director does a good job and sticks around for a bit longer, considering they are going to be the third game director this year.