Blizzard has announced the discontinuation of Hearthstone’s Duels game mode in a new blog post published to the Hearthstone website. The game mode will be discontinued effective April 2024.
Duels launched in late 2020 with the release of the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire expansion, and the mode allowed players to draft a Hero, select its Hero Power, and create a 16-card deck. The mode was supported with updates for more than three years, but was never officially launched out of beta.
We've made the difficult decision to discontinue support for Duels Mode later this year. Thank you to all the passionate Duels fans who made this Heroic Run possible.Read the details: https://t.co/5uZPb04f21 pic.twitter.com/xqtDbpsvQZ
— Hearthstone (@PlayHearthstone) January 4, 2024
Following the closure of the game mode, elements of Duels will be integrated into Hearthstone’s Arena format. Some Duels Treasures will be featured in an upcoming Arena season, though further details aren’t available at this time.
This isn’t the first time Blizzard has pulled support for a Hearthstone game mode. Mercenaries mode received its last major update in February 2023. That said, it’s not all grim news for Hearthstone. A co-op Duos mode is coming to Battlegrounds, and the game will celebrate its 10-year anniversary later this year.