MTG Arena may be the most visible way to play Magic: The Gathering digitally in 2026 but it’s not the only way. Magic: The Gathering Online has been around since 2002 and is functionally a lot more like playing on paper than Arena and much less like a video game. Players purchase their cards just like tabletop players do and every set and format are represented with their original rules. Unlike Arena that creates its own formats and then can errata a card within the app, MTGO is bound to the changes happening for tabletop players.
In a blog post by Wizards giving weekly announcements and updates, it was announced on February 17th, that there would be a major change to the number of decklists being posted on MTGO.com.
Starting today, we have adjusted the number of decklists posted to MTGO.com from our Challenges, Trials, and Premier Play tournaments. These will scale more appropriately with the size of the event.
Previously all of these events displayed the Top 32 decklists. Going forward, the amount displayed will be as follows:
- Events with 64 or fewer players: Top 8
- Events with 65-128 players: Top 16
- Events with 129+ players: Top 32
MTGGoldfish content manager, Seth (probably better known as Saffron Olive) posted to his X account calling out Wizards for what he called a “never ending war on data.” The sentiment could be seen in his comments and elsewhere on social media. Though not everyone was on the same page. The user RyanTaylorMTG responded to his criticism saying “as an advocate of replacing mtgo by mtga, i think this is a good update. systemic increase in decklists with reference to no. of players makes a lot of sense. let the whiners whine!”
The backlash however, was swift from the majority of players. X user Dr_Derael said “There aren't really any pros. It just widens information inequality between established pros and people with access to insider information from tournaments and people who don't have access to such information. This kind of data should always be public to avoid exactly that” A dedicated channel was set up on MTGO’s discord, which likely intensified the criticism.
The pushback from MTGO players led Wizards in a rare move to reverse their decision. In an update posted to MTGO.com, Wizards announced the decision:
We’re going to pull back on the decklist change we asked the Magic Online team to make earlier this week. Full stop.
Saffron Olive responded to the decision, praising both players and Wizards by saying “I'm proud of the community for standing up on this one and good on Wizards for listening.” It’s yet unknown if the decision will come back in a different way or if decklists are back for good but Wizards does believe they have a data overrepresentation problem worth solving. They also said in this statement that they “want to help aggregators get more representative slices of the metagame.” It’s safe to say more experimentation with deck lists is more likely than not but for now, most MTGO players are rejoicing now that decklists are back.
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