Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft encourages players to battle friends this week

Most Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft players battle complete strangers over the internet. This week, Blizzard wants you to spend more time challenging your buddies.

The digital card game is celebrating an event called Friendly Feud this week. It will allow players to finish Daily Quests by playing against people in their friends list. Normally, you can only complete those quests (which award in-game gold that you can spend on new cards) by playing against strangers in Standard, Wild, Arena, or Tavern Brawl formats. Joost van Dreunen, analyst at market research firm SuperData Research, told GamesBeat that Hearthstone makes $20 million a month, and it’s the leader in the $1.2 billion digital card game segment. UEvents like this keep players engaged (and more likely to spend money).