“Is this an out of season april fools joke?”
That is the phrase that spread like wildfire. This anonymous man, that presumably spent hundreds of dollars to be marketed to, giving the most polite and yet scathing viewpoint about the biggest piece of news of Blizzcon 2018, Diablo Immortal. Between it and the hilariously tone-deaf “Do you guys not have phones”, that panel is likely to become a hilarious piece of internet lore, akin to the Executive Suite of Microsoft dancing on stage and looking more awkward than your grandad attempting to twerk.
I had completely forgotten about it. Me and everyone who either doesn’t care that much about the Diablo franchise or doesn’t play on mobile. Quite frankly when I was reminded of it (thanks to yet another “do you guys not have phones” meme) I thought it had been quietly canceled. There was little to lose if they did. The Diablo franchise maintains its reputation, Blizzard can go back to trying to deal with the barrage of fires that have sprouted across their organization in a couple of weeks. It’s not like they would need to reorganize their team either. After all, Immortal was handed over to Chinese developer NetEase, stalwart creators of mobile games that your accountant hates.
They really did not disappoint with Diablo Immortal on that regard. I spent the beginning of the current mobile gaming era trying to explain to the elderly that no, they could no longer buy anything like Bejeweled or Zumba for their cellphone without nonsense timers, ads, and an ever-present pressure to give the developer more of your money. I was innocent. I thought it couldn’t get much worse. And now I am sitting here reading reports and Reddit threads saying that the top upgrades are behind that most despised of gaming items, the loot box, and that you could literally sit there dumping a Mercedes S-Class’s worth of cash to upgrade your character. And here we were all complaining about Gran Turismo trying to get a similar model on console. But they rolled back, and being how the entire purpose of Immortal is to get a couple of whales to dump vast amounts of (needed for other things?) cash in it with a small helping of the people who will throw you $5 every six months for a loot box, I don’t think this will be the case here.
The Netherlands and Belgium are saved from the scourge on wallets on part of the game by their legislation, which classifies loot boxes as gambling. “Banned in the Netherlands and Belgium” may yet become a litmus test on whether you can actually enjoy a mobile game for its merits instead of it being just a prompt for you to enter your credit card info. As far as Diablo Immortal is concerned, well, they already have been review-bombed on Metacritic for the sin of soiling a beloved PC franchise, having predatory monetization, and overall not being very good.
I would say that Blizzard stands to make a lot of progress by using this as a learning opportunity, but based on the fact that we have only recently learned that they are attempting to reduce diversity and inclusion to a chart, I am not especially hopeful.
