It feels absolutely amazing when the company that deserves to get a lot of hate finally gets it when they put insane monetization on their latest product. We are, of course, talking about Blizzard and their game, Diablo: Immortal. This title has been put through the grinder to such an extent that positives might come out the other end.
Has Blizzard been humbled, and is this good news for the release of Diablo 4?
Story on Diablo: Immortal thus far
When Blizzard announced the game for the first time as a mobile game, everyone feared that it was going to be a pay-to-win mess. Of course, the devs told us that is not going to be the case, and in hindsight, that was a complete lie. Once the game was released on June 2nd, everyone was disgusted by the micro transactions included in this game.
Even if the game was completely free-to-play (F2P), the “free” is extremely debatable because certain progress within the game is locked away from F2P players by requiring an incredible amount of time. Some parts, such as getting a single piece of gear, could take an average of six months of grinding, according to analysts, or if you are a pay-to-win (P2W) player, it takes only a few dollars, depending on the time.
Unfortunately, that is only the first gate that a F2P player runs into, as getting full gear can take years, while P2W takes over $100k to obtain full gear. It would be good if that was the end of the story, but it is not. The real issue is that the micro transactions are shoved into the player’s face after pretty much every interaction with the game.
Promises for Diablo 4
The developers of Diablo 4 have promised that the game is not going to be monetized like Diablo: Immortal, and honestly, while we do believe that, thinking that the monetization is still not going to be a big deal is probably not true. One of the main reasons why we think that is the case is because even if the Diablo: Immortal micro transactions are extremely overpriced and available for everything in the game, despite the gigantic backlash, there are still players who are throwing money at the game.
Even with all the hate, Blizzard, at least from the financial perspective, has no reason to lower the monetization because many players will still throw money at the game. We do hope Diablo 4 does not follow the same fate as its mobile port, but we will have to wait and see if the developers will hold their word or follow the money train.
With so much backlash and shade thrown at Blizzard recently, they cannot allow another release to flop utterly and might actually stick to their promise. Time will tell.
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