After fifteen years of employment at Blizzard, Hearthstone's game director to start a new chapter in his career. Ben Brode announced that today would be his last day in a forum post on the Blizzard forums:
After 15 years at Blizzard and almost 10 years working on Hearthstone, I have made the incredibly difficult decision to embark on a new journey.
Man, that was a hard sentence to type.
With over 70 million registered players, Hearthstone is one of Blizzard's biggest titles. Not only was Hearthstone Blizzard's first free-to-play game, it was also Blizzard's first foray into mobile; Hearthstone launched on iPad in 2014 and phones in 2015. While the game was formally announced in 2013, Ben Brode had been working on it since 2008.
In Brode's final post, he stressed how much of Hearthstone is a team effort, and how much energy the team gets from the game's passionate community:
To the passionate community of players – I will miss you, and the laughs we shared together. Thank you for making being a part of Hearthstone so much fun for me. I’ve loved every minute.
