🐱 Dedicated ‘Diablo’ Site Will Stop Supporting ‘Diablo Immortal’ Because It’s Against Its ‘Values’

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7ve4d/dedicated-diablo-site-will-stop-supporting-diablo-immortal-because-its-against-its-values

https://archive.ph/3Fo3t

Maxroll, a fansite and online resource for games like Diablo III and Lost Ark, is shutting down the branch of its site that focuses on Diablo Immortal, citing concerns with its monetization scheme.


Diablo Immortal has been an extremely controversial game, to put it lightly. Ever since the game came out, players have questioned the extreme measure the game goes to get you to spend money on it. The game also isn’t available in the Netherlands and Belgium because of their laws regarding loot boxes.
The writers and editors at Maxroll cited the economic structure of the game as the biggest reason why they are discontinuing the branch of their site that covers Diablo Immortal. They said that even if most players weren’t vulnerable to the tactics used in Diablo Immortal to get people to impulsively spend, continuing to support a game that they feel is predatory was against their core values as a site.
“Canceling a game we've cumulatively put 10,000+ hours of work (and a ton of developer money) into is not something we do lightly. In fact, we've never discontinued a game before,” they wrote in a blog post explaining their decision. “Even with a poor reception, our Immortal Branch would continue to generate revenue on our end. Life is about more than money though, it’s about doing the right thing.”
As Waypoint recently reported, Diablo Immortal’s monetization schemes can be particularly predatory for people with gambling addictions, which Maxroll gave as the first reason for why it will no longer support the game.
“The predatory Pay-To-Win system greatly exceeds what's considered the norm for mobile gaming. Gambling addictions are real and can completely destroy lives,” the site wrote. “Even if 99% of players have perfect impulse control, we still can't stomach what happens to the other 1%. This is completely against our values and we will not remain a part of this any longer.”
Waypoint reached out to Maxroll for comment but they did not respond in time for publication.
The post goes on to explain that on top of the monetization scheme of the game, the lackluster reaction from the community towards the game impacted their decision.
“The disappointment we felt at launch aligns with the community's. Not just from the [pay to win] perspective, but about the game itself” they wrote. “While we are not game designers, we can't believe this is the state of the game after nearly 2 years of testing and feedback.”

 

[AnotherPleb]

It's the American version of Musou / Dynasty Warriors; sometimes you just want to hack and slash your way through thousands of baddies.

Then why not play them? Those games have less gacha shit in them.

 

[Haramburger]

Then why not play them? Those games have less gacha shit in them.

There's quite a bit of grinding for people to get extra weapons, merge skills onto other keepers, grind them up, waiting for a drop with 2 or more desired skills, etc.

 

[Reverend]

Wait, people actually play Diablo Immortal?

Made $24M in the last two weeks. Yes people are paying and playing.

 

[Blacklight]

It should not be legal to push a system that is this blatantly predatory and some kid will drive their parents into crippling debt for their gems.

At what point does it become the parents fault for giving the kid access to both the device, and unchecked access to their wallet?

 

[Suburban Bastard]

Isn't this the gatcha game that you've gotta spend like $300k US to get to the end? Woof! What a way to finish destroying the Blazzars brand.

It’s cheaper to put a down payment on a house than max out your character.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

However the players are to blame as well. Cooosuuummming every shitty rip off Blizz has made in the last ten years.

It's not even players in general, but rather a minority of players who actually want to spend hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars on this game that are more than enough for Blizzard to achieve profit.

 

[timewave0]

I cannot understand the appeal of Diablo. What is fun about it?

I only played D1 a little bit but played D2 a lot — Diablo’s appeal has always partially come from loot slot machines. You farm the same areas and bosses repeatedly hoping for drops. Most of the really good items and runes have crazy low drop rates, so it feels even better when they actually drop. D2’s strengths are item design, atmosphere, and difficulty/sense of danger.

In D2, you wager time for a chance to win interesting items. In Immortal, you wager real money for a chance to win boring items. All of the cool stats in D2 have effectively been replaced with one boring stat — combat rating — designed with the sole intention of gating f2p players out of content. Beyond shameful design.

 

[bango skank]

Ive been playing for a while at night after work since pretty close to launch and Ive been braced to hit the p2w wall the entire time but I haven’t seen anything egregious yet? I assumed it was endgame stuff but im almost paragon 60 and havent seen anything to justify the chicken-little-ing about the game…

 

[Thiletonomics]

Made $24M in the last two weeks. Yes people are paying and playing.

And it turned out to be $49M in mobile sales, during the game's first month.

 

[Maurice Caine]

I never understood the appeal of blizzard games to begin with and always acted confused towards those ultranerds wasting their lives in Warcraft II and Starcraft.

 

[Spunt]

If you want a fun Diablo experience just play Path of Exile or the Torchlight series. The latter in particular is a "pay once, get game" model and has loads of quality of life features that the Diablo games lack.