Diablo Immortal is nothing short of one of the most controversial video games released in the industry's history. While it is true that plenty of games have released before it that use controversial microtransaction strategies in order to get players to invest money, Diablo Immortal takes these strategies to an exorbitant level.
The systems within the game are so bad that Diablo Immortal has been compared to other microtransaction nightmares like FIFA Ultimate Team or Star Wars Battlefront 2. The systems themselves wouldn't be a problem, except that several of them take extreme amounts of time without money, and with money they require potentially thousands of dollars.
Perhaps the most extreme of these is the gem system in Diablo Immortal, specifically what it takes to acquire a 5-star gem in the game. Without an extreme case of good luck, it allegedly takes over $16,000 on average for a player to acquire a 5-star gem, and each character was thought to be able to hold six 5-star gems at one time. A Diablo Immortal gem slot machine can be used for players to calculate the total for themselves, corroborating the money required. However, a player may have recently found that the game's gem system actually goes much deeper and could therefore increase the amount of money required to max out a character by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Reddit user ShiftYourCarcass created a lengthy post that described how players had been fooled into thinking the already devastating number of $100,000 was necessary to fully max out a character's six legendary gems. In reality, ShiftYourCarcass believes the true number to be upwards of $540,000, and according to them, that is a fairly lucky number. This is due to the discovery of up to 36 possible 5-star gem slots that can be unlocked through Awakening, which creates more slots after maxing out six 5-star gems. ShiftYourCarcass actually believe that a person on the unlucky side could easily need $1 million in their quest to fully max out a character, a number that puts Quin69's ludicrous Diablo Immortal spending to shame.
Out of a combination of frustration and exasperation, Reddit users filled the thread with jokes about the incredibly low review scores of Diablo Immortal. One user joked that they can't wait to see the hidden mechanic unlocked after the 36 gem spots. Another user noted that the game had become pay-to-pay instead of pay-to-play, to which another user responded it was actually pay-to-unlock-more-ways-to-pay. Yet another commenter offered Diablo Immortal players a choice: max out a character or buy a house.
Needless to say, many players as well as gamers in general are perturbed by Blizzard and Diablo Immortal. Considering it may be the most blatant example of corporate greed within the gaming industry to date, such frustration is beyond justified, especially if this is the trend the industry is planning to follow in the coming years.
Diablo Immortal is available on Mobile and PC.