I was reminded of this because of (yet again) discussions about Dominion VP counting.
In my opinion, Hearthstone has a
much more unfair tracking situation than Dominion ever had. Hearthstone is playable on several platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android) but the trackers can't exist on mobile and barely exist on Mac (last time I tried one, it didn't work for me).
Blizzard has given the OK to trackers, so although you can't use them at in-person tournaments as far as I know, there's no reason
not to use a tracker on ladder. Unless, of course, you can't because of the platform you play on.
I'm not arguing that Blizzard is doing anything wrong here. I assume (without evidence) that most competitive Hearthstone players play on Windows and they all have equal benefit from trackers. Having trackers available makes the experience better for those players. If you play casually on mobile, maybe you don't care if you're unfairly disadvantaged by lack of tracker. Anyway, it's not like Blizzard can realistically ban trackers given how cheaty the Hearthstone community can be (Personman has nothing on 'em), and it'd be a big UI headache to build a tracker into the official client, so that's never going to happen. Am I happy playing sans tracker? No, but I'm glad that Hearthstone is available cross-platform at all, so I can't complain overall.
I just think it's funny how drama sometimes erupts on f.ds over trackers that arguably give similar or less advantage than the Hearthstone trackers, are available on all desktop platforms (not the case in Hearthstone), tell the opponent that the tracker is being used (not the case in Hearthstone), offer tracking functionality to the opponent even if the opponent isn't running a tracker (not the case in Hearthstone), and either can be turned off by opponent request or advertise their presence in the game name or automatch settings (also not the case in Hearthstone).