Diablo Immortal was originally supposed to be the flagship breakthrough title for Activision Blizzard on mobile phones, only for the game to come under scrutiny and criticism for its surprisingly predatory monetization scheme. The reveal that it could take hundreds of thousands of dollars for players to max out their characters made headlines right away, and it doesn't seem like the controversy is over just yet.
Namely, Maxroll has just announced that it's discontinuing its Diablo Immortal branch, an unprecedented move for one of the biggest and most established RPG guide sites on the Internet. The official post detailing this decision explains that Maxroll's community is the single most crucial aspect of the endeavor for the team and that the company essentially cannot continue producing Immortal guides in good faith.
The stories of streamers spending thousands of dollars on Diablo Immortal only to never receive the loot items they need to make progression in the game are increasingly more common as more and more players enter Immortal's endgame difficulties. This is, as expected, one of the main reasons why Maxroll has decided to discontinue its guides for the game, though it's not the only one. According to Maxroll, there are several big issues with Immortal at this time: its economic structure, the community's disappointment with the game, and generally unrewarding gameplay.
Maxroll also explained that it's not about money at this point, and said that Activision Blizzard would need to walk back on Diablo Immortal's pay-to-win mechanics, and the company's announcement said that "[they] don't see a path forward" unless the game gets a major revamp in this respect. Maxroll's team of Diablo Immortal experts had cumulatively spent over 10,000 gameplay hours studying the game over the course of the last year and a half, and the company still felt that it needed to walk away from the project to do the right thing by its community.
While it was initially calculated that it would take just over $100,000 for players to max out their characters in the game, further discoveries revealed that it would actually take over $500,000 to max a character in Immortal. This reveal came about as players unlocked some of the game's most obscure mechanics, including the so-called Awakening, which opens up even more gem slots for a character to equip.
It seems increasingly less likely that Activision Blizzard will revamp Diablo Immortal to be a less predatory game as time goes on. In fact, the community's main concern right now is whether Diablo 4 could have the same issues as Immortal since the company announced that its upcoming flagship RPG would be a game-as-a-service, rather than a one-off standalone release.
Diablo Immortal is now available on PC, Android, and iOS platforms.
Source: Maxroll