Tech

Blizzard does not fall for the donkey with Diablo Immortal and says that the era of focusing on the PC is over

We have had a very busy few weeks with Diablo Immortal and all the controversy that this game has generated due to its micropayments, and that is that, in the end, they have become in all an example of how badly a project of this type can go. I am not speaking without reason, we have already seen that Guild Wars 2 is a model to follow within the sector of free video games with reasonable micropayments and that Diablo Immortal is the opposite.

Despite all the doses of reality that Blizzard has taken with Diablo Immortal, a game that has a score of 0.3 out of 10 on Metacritic, and that it has been confirmed that around 110,000 dollars are needed to fully improve a character, the company continues to defend that it is 99.5% “accessible for free”. Is Blizzard missing the truth? No, you can play Diablo Immortal for free, but you won’t get to the level of character development you want or get good loot, let alone compete on a level playing field in PvP.

According to Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard:

“When we thought about monetization, at the highest level it was: How do we provide a free Diablo experience to hundreds of millions of people, where they can literally do 99.5% of everything in the game? Monetization comes at the end of the game. The philosophy was always to lead with great gameplay and make sure hundreds of millions of people can get through the entire campaign at no cost. From that point of view, it feels really good as an introduction to Diablo.”

The monetization does not come to the end of the game, it is present from the beginning and it has been considered with such a forced integration that Diablo Immortal almost looks like a casino. Shortly after your first hour of play, and if you finish a final boss, the game offers you as a “reward” the possibility of buying a loot box for 0.99 euros, with a value of 800%! Quite a “bargain”, come on (note the irony).

Blizzard tries to pass the buck by diverting and adapting the conversation as it sees fit, but in the end the reality is what it is, Diablo Immortal is an unreliable, monotonous and repetitive “pay to win” where spending money will make you better than others. In other words, is an example of what a video game should not beand how poorly the “free to play” model can be implemented with micropayments.

Devil Immortal

Diablo Immortal marks the end of the PC as Blizzard’s central objective

Ybarra not only refused to accept that Diablo Immortal is a black mark in the history of the well-known franchise, but also hinted that this marks the future of the company’s strategyand that the PC is no longer the central platform for Blizzard. This comment has many possible implications, and they are troubling.

On the one hand, it hints that Diablo Immortal could be the first of more titles for mobile focused on the well-known Blizzard franchises that would adopt the same system of excessive micropayments, and on the other hand it also suggests that they are likely to end up giving smartphone games priority over those for PC at some point.

We will see how the situation evolves and what Blizzard ends up doing in the end, but the truth is that unfortunately things do not seem to look good at all. I believe that Diablo IV is going to be key in this regardand that it is very likely that it will also end up with some kind of micropayment model, even though it will not be a “free to play” game.

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