Hearthstone adds King Krush, the first cosmetic pet, but to get him you’ll probably have to deal with predatory monetization

Hearthstone is going to add interactive cosmetic pets that cheer you on as you play — but what should have been a fun addition to the game is marred by the rather predatory process of actually acquiring said pet. You’ll need to gamble in a gacha-style roulette where you have a very small chance of obtaining the pet for free, but you’re much more likely to have to spend loads of money and keep earning other rewards (that you might or might not want) until the pet is yours.

What are pets in Hearthstone, and what do they do?

First, let’s talk about what they are. According to the blog post, pets are “cosmetic creatures that will join you and your Hero on the game board during matches (Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, Arena, and Practice). Your feisty little friend will react to gameplay as you make a big move or suffer a devastating blow.” And in fact, the post is illustrated with a lot of cute animations showcasing how the little guy mimics you when you use a hero emote, with animations and sounds.

You can also “pet” it by clicking it, which might end up feeding it a treat, giving it an interactive toy, or other things. When your Constructed game ends, you’ll now be taken to a brand-new screen where your pet will either celebrate your victory or do a funny “defeated” animation in an attempt to lighten the mood after a loss.

Finally, pets will also gain experience as you interact with them and play games. That experience can be used to unlock new skins for each pet — King Krush will have at least three other skins besides his initial one, culminating in the very cute King Plush

Sounds great so far, right? Well…

But the way to actually obtain King Krush is carnivorously greedy

The bad part about all of this is that in order to grab King Krush as your pet, you’ll have to go through a layer of gacha gambling. Do you enjoy randomized rewards? You better, because randomized rewards it is. The game is introducing something called Darkmoon Faire Treasures, which is basically a retrofitted version of Battlegrounds Battle Bash, a random rewards feature that no one really liked.

You’ll get one token to play once for free. Once you pull, you’ll get one of ten possible rewards, randomly chosen. Besides the pet itself, rewards include Signature cards, Hero skins, card packs, and more. But as you might have guessed, the rarer or more prestigious a reward is, the less likely you are to pull it. After your first pull, you need to purchase each and every additional pull, and it takes ten pulls in total to walk away with every prize.

You can get all ten items in exactly ten pulls — but that will cost you a whopping $158, since pulls can only be purchased with Runestones which cost real world money. And the price actually goes up with each new pull. It gets worse: the chance to get the main prize — the pet itself — on the first pull is a laughable 0.1%. And unlike the price, your odds of getting King Krush barely go up at all: by your tenth pull your chance to get it will be 100%, sure, but by the ninth pull, it’s still a measly 6.67%, according to calculations done by the community based on the odds and values disclosed by Blizzard.

If you want every single reward — the truth is that there is some nice stuff to be had there besides the pet, like some cool skins, a lot of cards, and packs — the money value of getting it all is similar to what already is in the in-game store, so for players who were willing to spend all of that money in the game anyway, it might be a pretty fair deal. But if all you want is the pet, you’re absolutely, incredibly, and irredeemably out of luck.

So no, this is not nearly as exciting as it should have been. The introduction of cosmetic interactive pets to Hearthstone has been tainted by aggressive, predatory monetization practices. Color me positively underwhelmed — but, sadly, not exactly surprised.