New Zealand Twitch Streamer Quin69 has been highlighting the frustrations of many Diablo Immortal players regarding its aggressive microtransactions model. After spending several thousand dollars on Diablo Immortal's shop, the streamer has yet to receive one of the coveted 5-star legendary quality gems. In a way, this has shown that "pay to win" isn't always the case, as this streamer burns away an alarming amount of cash without success.
Diablo Immortal's release was highly anticipated, with many Diablo series fans looking forward to the next entry in Blizzard's iconic demon-slaying action RPG. As a mobile game with a free-to-play cash shop model, which also features PvP, many gamers were skeptical due to the potential for wealthier players' ability to simply pay to win. Many mobile games feature aggressive microtransactions systems, which frequently pester the player to make purchases or spend money to continue enjoying the game, something Blizzard promised to avoid. While all of the game's content is accessible for free, the reality for many players is that a long grind lies ahead for anyone not willing to shell out money to make progress.
This has been made most apparent with the efforts of Quin69, a Twitch streamer that has been spending large sums of money on Diablo Immortal, stating, "I'm not a whale, I'm a scientist. The world needs to know about this system." His investment into the game is not so much about his personal drive for building a powerful character, but rather to shed light on the glaring problems behind Diablo Immortal's cash shop and progression system. After spending the equivalent of over $4,000 USD, Quin69 has effectively acquired the total earnings of over a full year of free-to-play progress. This has made many free-to-play players feel hopeless about the road ahead, while simultaneously discouraging would-be cash shop investors due to the poor odds of success.
Microtransactions are commonplace in free-to-play games and especially mobile games where a purchase is always just a few button presses away. While Blizzard had promised Diablo Immortal's microtransactions would be fair, the reality appears to be a predatory system that demands money investment around seemingly every corner, with a combination of time-saver purchases and the ability to pay to acquire legendary gems, an important aspect of the game's gearing system that is necessary for players to tackle increasingly difficult content. Without relying on cash shop purchases, free-to-play players would have to spend absurd amounts of time attempting to acquire legendary gems.
With Diablo Immortal barred from releasing in the Netherlands and Belgium due to violating their gambling laws and the gaming community's unforgiving history regarding unrealistic cash shop systems, Blizzard is going to need to reconsider some of their design choices if they wish to retain their player base and credibility. Greedy cash shops are not a good look, recently having severely damaged the reputations of DICE and EA for the extremely controversial Star Wars Battlefront 2 microtransaction system. Hopefully, Blizzard will learn from player feedback and respond accordingly.
Diablo Immortal is available on Mobile and PC.