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It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

• deleted 4y ago
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• opensource4life 4y ago
  Man I miss Diablo
• totetsu 4y ago
  But this is just the intangible economy at work..
• phantomathkg 4y ago
  At the end, it is a NetEase game with Diablo skin. So do expect it use all the horrible trick from China mobile game company.
• AdvicePlz 4y ago
  I knew someone who worked for EA as a UX researcher. He said that games like these are primarily targeting whales who will drop $10k on a game. They are the real money earners. The really sad part was the he said the most whales aren't super rich, they're just people with an addiction.
  • jiggawatts 4y ago
    I've seen similar comments by several game devs, but at least some of them said that they make most of their money from the kids of the ultra-wealthy. Think of some oil Sheik's son bored to death at home because it's too hot to go outside. But yeah, the "loot boxes" that are mostly gambling have been banned in many countries because they're targeted at young children.
    • hackernewds 4y ago
      Reminds me of EA Sports FIFA. The whole Build a team process is predatory and based on gambling + micro transactions
    • spoiler 4y ago
      > I've seen similar comments by several game devs, but at least some of them said that they make most of their money from the kids of the ultra-wealthy. This seems like naïve speculation to me. Think about the number/scaling of this. It would give them a few months worth of income at best? The sadder truth is that they're exploiting escapism and maladaptive coping (addiction, gambling) in people who also use escapism to cope/relax. Often times, those same people in desperate need of escapism are there because they struggle in real life, often financially too. So, the little reprieve they get from gaming negative impacts their physical lives. Diablo Immortal is a caricature of the depravity most games have become. A few games like Overwatch are not P2W, but even they have lootbox mechanics for cosmetic skins (you get boxes for leveling up and challenges, as you play, though). Blizzard literally can't help themselves.
      • kuang_eleven 4y ago
        The interesting thing is that you would think Blizzard would have known this. Literally the last game in the same Diablo series launched with a much-hated Real Money Auction House, which was eventually removed.
    • j_4 4y ago
      To me this "ultra-wealthy" thing has always sounded like a convenient lie whale-game devs tell themselves to sleep soundly at night. These dark pattern black holes are made purely to form an addiction and turn it into profit, they don't care about who's on the receiving end. There's an increasing number of players who expect that either a) a game will take unlimited money and feed them dopamines in return, or b) they never have to pay a dime for anything because they're fully subsidized by the addicts. I have conflicted feelings about administrative regulation of this stuff, I just hate that things are this way, especially as an independent game dev. (I'll do the hustle - my first game Pawnbarian is a chess-flavored puzzle roguelike. On mobile it's an ad-free demo with a single $7 IAP for the whole thing. Out on Steam and Android, iOS will follow soon. j4nw.com/pawnbarian)
      • Karrot_Kream 4y ago
        It's hard for a person in the throes of addiction to last as a whale for long. Most long lived whales are likely to be from wealthy families, or the fun side addiction for a very wealthy individual. That doesn't change the fact that there are addicted people who spend a large percentage of their income on a game. Whales are one thing and addicted players are another.
        • j_4 4y ago
          I don't necessarily disagree, but for the purpose of my argument this is splitting hairs. Both audiences are functionally the same from the game design standpoint.
        • cycomanic 4y ago
          Why do you think the mechanics of nonchemical addiction are different to chemical addiction? I certainly see plenty of nonrich people being addicted to drugs and essentially spend everything they have on drugs (the proximity to crime is obviously an additional factor)
        • patrec 4y ago
          > It's hard for a person in the throes of addiction to last as a whale for long. They don't have to. Repeatedly unearthing cow-clickers whom you can milk for $10'000 before sending them into financial ruin sounds like a much more viable business strategy to me than trying to build a portfolio of people both rich and dumb enough to sustainably cow-click.
    • aliswe 4y ago
      > but at least some of them said that they make most of their money from the kids of the ultra-wealthy. sorry, but that's just sickening.
  • bloodyplonker22 4y ago
    Right, most "super rich" people don't get "super rich" by doing super stupid things.
    • taotau 4y ago
      True...ish, but i bet a percentage of them get rich by focussing on what they are good at and neglecting their families, just making piles of money available. There's probably enough kids getting 10K a month pocket money to make GPs stragetgy viable.
    • lozenge 4y ago
      The Chinese proverb “rags to rags in three generations” says that family wealth does not last for three generations. The first generation makes the money, the second spends it and the third sees none of the wealth.
      • ctchocula 4y ago
        One explanation could be a difference between China and the West. Historically the West relies on primogeniture where the eldest son inherits a vast majority of the fortune and other sons need to move out and build a career for themselves. Classical China OTOH would split their fortune (which for 90% of folks was land since most were farmers) between their sons. Primogeniture encourages maintaining wealth across generations through the eldest son while the latter could mean the fortune gets spread out and eventually lost within 3 generations. For example, see research by Thomas Piketty about how ppl who were rich in 16th century Italy are still absurdly rich today.
      • bobnamob 4y ago
        That phenomenon probably has more to do with wealth being spread increasingly thin across ever-larger generations
        • b112 4y ago
          Maybe? Certainly more offspring was normal, the further back you go. So wealth division could more easily happen. But most cultures had the idea of the "first born", the official heir... for this very reason! Most of the loot, holdings, tended to go the eldest.
  • tjpnz 4y ago
    Time to start regulating these games in the same way we regulate gambling. They shouldn't be sold to children. They're not Kinda eggs nor LOL Surprise and should never be brushed off as surprise mechanics. They're glorified slot machines, through and through.
    • ArmandGrillet 4y ago
      Diablo Immortal is not available in Belgium and the Netherlands due to that: https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-immortal-wont-be-released-in-belgium-or-the-netherlands-because-of-loot-boxes/ https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-immortal-wont-be-released-in-...
      • droopyEyelids 4y ago
        What allows these countries to stand up for their population against billion dollar corporations?
        • tjpnz 4y ago
          Strong democracies with little to no tolerance for lobbyists.
    • xuki 4y ago
      Apple/Google revenue will see a big decline if those games are regulated. Most if not all the top grossing games on mobile follow the same spending pattern, and a big chunk of app stores' revenue come from those games.
      • still_grokking 4y ago
        And that's exactly the reason almost all mobile game are utter trash. Of course that was caused because the app-"economy" was broken from day one on: You couldn't and still can't call out fair prices on mobile software. People weren't and aren't willing to pay those. So you have to make the software "free" and sell your user's data, or charge one or two bucks and use some other immoral scheme to get your actual costs covered. On a broken market there are only broken products… Simple as that.
  • seydor 4y ago
    10k over a long period is very small compared to what one can lose in a casino night, and casinos do exist. What kind of game was your friend working on? Whales do exist but they are not the bulk of the revenue
    • black_puppydog 4y ago
      > 10k over a long period is very small compared to what one can lose in a casino night that's a very low bar to set...
    • gspr 4y ago
      > casinos do exist. In many jurisdictions they don't. And where they do, they're often very heavily regulated.
      • charlieyu1 4y ago
        While the stock market is much more accessible, operates in a less transparent way, and ruins more people for life than an actual casino.
        • deleted 4y ago
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        • elif 4y ago
          The stock market, by inflationary design, rewards >50% of the time. Gambling, by regulated design, rewards 45-49% of the time. Diablo Immortal, by comparison, is designed to reward 0% of the time.
    • mafaa 4y ago
      Under 1% of users for over 50% of your mobile gaming revenue with a not single purchase model has been a good general estimate since 2010; I invite you to google an publicly available data on that. From what I've seen privately 50% is a vast understatement. And no, most of those users cannot afford what they spend.
    • 4y ago
  • therouwboat 4y ago
    I used to play a MUD thats been around for 30 years and has active playerbase of maybe 1-4k people and there were some players who would pay 20-40k for special wizard made items. It was run by a non-profit, so all that money went to keep the game running, but yeah, some people put a lot of money on these games.
  • ekianjo 4y ago
    > they're just people with an addiction. Everyone has an addiction to something. You are lucky if its to something thats cheap and legal.
    • xmodem 4y ago
      It depends on the timeframe obviously, but $10k is hardly cheap.
      • chii 4y ago
        it is cheaper than drugs. If you got to be addicted to something, i don't think these mobile games are the worst out there. Of course, the best outcome is not to be addicted.
        • Panoramix 4y ago
          What a strange logic. You can be addicted to hundreds of things a the same time, it doesn't justify what these videogames are doing.
        • xmodem 4y ago
          I'm not sure that "this thing isn't as bad as illegal drugs" is a winning argument. (I'm also not sure it's actually true, either - would depend on what metric you use)
      • charlieyu1 4y ago
        10k a year is hardly a lot… As a Japanese gamer says, paying for games is like dining out. You get nothing useful after a good meal, and paying for games may as well be more useful.
        • allarm 4y ago
          > 10k a year is hardly a lot In my country 16k/y is a median salary. It’s heavily influenced by 1 or 2 major cities - the rest of the country earns much less, 10k/y is considered to be a decent salary. So no, it is a huge amount of money.
  • matheusmoreira 4y ago
    > they're just people with an addiction Yes. These games are straight up designed to be habit forming and should be regarded as equivalent to gambling and addictive drugs. I've been down that rabbit hole myself. Daily tasks and rewards offer positive reinforcement. Timers create a schedule for players, place a cap on their progression and establish negative reinforcement by punishing days of inactivity. Player groups reinforce each other's behavior. The goal is to get them to log in every day and invest in the game. People pay money to uncap their progression. This turns these games into spending competitions: whoever spends the most money wins the game. The corporation is the only true winner of course. I managed to cure myself of this addiction by... cheating. I reverse engineered the game and wrote a bot for it. All those silly tasks were now getting done automatically, my progression was assured and the game's hold over me was destroyed. The best part was my bot was statistically indistinguishable from a sufficiently addicted player due to the game's own design. I'd like to believe I helped destroy that game.
    • chii 4y ago
      so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit, even if that spending isn't great for themselves. Like someone who's very invested in their hobby, they could be dropping tens of thousands of dollars into it (depending on the hobby of course). Why are those not considered the same as wasting money on mobile games?
      • matheusmoreira 4y ago
        Hey, I love video games. They've given me thousands and thousands of hours of fun. Awesome games like Subnautica can bring joy to the world. The problem is the one time I tried mobile games I eventually started waking up at 3 AM because that's when some timer resets. At some point I started wondering where my life went so wrong. Then I started studying the design of these games and I realized they are designed to cause this sort of addiction and harm. They employ the same strategies as casinos and drug dealers. They straight up subvert the reward center of people's brains to the point they harm themselves and even destroy their own lives.
  • lordnacho 4y ago
    Are there enough of those guys vs people who will spend 10? I guess you need 1k of those people to make up one whale, but aren't there more little players by a lot? I guess I don't have the data. Also maybe you can get both at once by targeting the big guy.
    • Hendrikto 4y ago
      The vast majority of users do not spent anything. This is no problem for the game developers, as they can serve as cannon fodder for the few who do invest money.
  • Ekaros 4y ago
    I wonder what we could do to legally balance this. Out right banning is bit questionable. But weekly or monthly spending reports? Some total number shown regularly to players?
    • doctor_eval 4y ago
      You could just cap the maximum spend of any one player in any game (or group of players). Even if it was some stupid high number like $1,000, it would limit the blast radius. Also, banning loot boxes of course. Totally can be done.
    • Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
      I think that the option in appstores to completely hide all games with in-app purchases would be enough. Like, if you don't know they exist, you can't get hooked. Probably banning advertising such games anywhere but on the AppStores, too.
      • Ekaros 4y ago
        I'm all for advertisement ban. Or at least limiting periods allowed. It gets either really funny, sad or scary however you take it when you see some games like Raid Shadow Legends advertised for years extremely prominently. At least when comparing to most other mobile titles... And then the places it is advertised. Like cooking channels...
  • Krasnol 4y ago
    Star Citizen isn't even a proper game and still works perfectly living mainly from whales. We've passed some really unhealthy point in game development with this bonus money making...
  • phpisthebest 4y ago
    Rich people are rich because they do not spend $10K on a digital downloads that have no actual value... The ONLY people that would do that, are people with an addiction
    • concordDance 4y ago
      Tell that to the oil shiek's family...
    • thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
      There are a lot of famous rich addicts. Or were.
    • deleted 4y ago
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  • charlieyu1 4y ago
    People who will throw massive money in games, won’t be happy about Blizzard.
  • wincy 4y ago
    I uninstalled Diablo Immortal last night as the pull to spend money was getting greater in my mind. I’ve been very sick for a couple weeks and basically bed bound, so this game was mindless and seemed fun. I got to “max level” (which is nothing of the sort the game essentially has infinite progression), and Back when I worked a dead end call center job working 80 hours a week I spent basically $100 a day on a Japanese free to play mobile game. It consumed my life and I was super depressed anyway. I felt that same feeling last night to just spend $100 “for fun” and realized how bad this game was going to be for me. These games manage to tickle that hyper competitive part of my brain that wants to “win at any cost”. So I’ll spend money I shouldn’t on a game.
    • jules 4y ago
      It's not just the money though. Even if you remove pay-to-win and move to an ad supported model, these games are still engineered to maximally waste your time. In fact, even games that are not designed to maximize your time spent in the game can be bad. The reward hits you get from games make you less likely to seek out other types of reward in your life. And even when you're not playing the game, your brain will be running a background task strategising how to maximize your results in the game.
  • baby 4y ago
    I think it depends, I know a lot of rich people who spend a lot on skins and others. Like, a lot.
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• jack_pp 4y ago
  I've watched a lot of discussions about this from twitch streamers and I'm not sure where I stand.. On the one hand I'm amazed at how good this game looks on mobile and if you're just the type to casually play a game not really caring about being the best at it you could have fun playing it for free or for very cheap. On the other hand this game is clearly exploitative and while other games like Hearthstone or Clash Royale have similar pay to win mechanics they also have ways for you to enjoy the game competitively without spending a whole lot of money. I know some countries banned games like this but I wonder, if these games get banned why not ban casinos too?
  • rightbyte 4y ago
    Casinos are banned in many places and also banned for kids in most places. Clash royale is sad, becouse it is a extremely good game if it were not for the pay to win leveling mechanics. I used to play it alot but it became too frustrating meeting bad players with low ELO but high level cards that you essentially couldn't win over unless they messed up bad. Edit: To level up all cards in Clash Royale you also have to spend a silly amount of money. Exponential costs.
    • Marazan 4y ago
      Clash Royale is way more generous with free gold to level up cards these days. Far, far, quicker to get cards to tournament standard.
    • jack_pp 4y ago
      I just started playing it after a long break. I remember you used to need to upgrade your cards to challenge level in order to be competitive in challenges but now they give you all cards in challenge mode at the standard level, even cards you haven't found yet It costs 10 gems to play a challenge and you can buy 500 gems for 5$ so that's 50 challenges, say you get at least 7 games per challenge so 350 games for 5$ where only skill matters. I'd say that's not exploitative. Of course if you care about your rank and having a Big Number in a silly mobile game then yes you either have to play a lot or pay a lot of money.
• pototo666 4y ago
  As someone used to work for Chinese mobile game companies. $110k sounds average for a pay-to-win game. But the game is new. Designers would create other slots to make money.
  • forgotpwd16 4y ago
    >average for a pay-to-win game What games are above this average?
    • mlindner 4y ago
      They're incredibly popular in east asia in general. It's practically taken over the game markets over there.
      • mlindner 4y ago
        Why the downvotes?
    • wincy 4y ago
      I played a game called Kingdom Conquest then Kingdom Conquest 2 that I could see exceeding this. The game reset every few months and you’d have to spend the money all over again. I quit after my “kingdom” and all the other English speaking people got brutally subjugated by our Japanese counterparts. We just didn’t spend nearly as much money as them and totally lost.
    • pototo666 4y ago
      Many mobile games made by Chinese, especially Net Ease, who also makes Diablo Immortal. Net Ease is notoriously good at sucking money from whales.
• holoduke 4y ago
  Lootbox games: I don't understand why these kind of games are not getting banned or heavily restricted. There is absolutely not a single positive thing about these games. Moral doesn't matter.
  • paol 4y ago
    They are: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/1/23149771/diablo-immortal-loot-boxes-belgium-the-netherlands-gambling https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/1/23149771/diablo-immortal-l... More countries need to adopt similar laws.
  • MrOxiMoron 4y ago
    it won't be available in the Netherlands or Belgium, because we have laws against them, now they just don't release the games here. I hope more of the EU will join us with similar laws so it will become impactful.
  • pototo666 4y ago
    Not to defend lootbox game. But some positive thing: it makes some people's life less boring. Lootbox doesn't make games interesting. But lootbox generates money to hire good designer, programmer to create interesting games, at least for some players.
    • stingraycharles 4y ago
      A more cynical perspective is that the designer and programmer are tasked with using all tricks possible to coerce their players to pay money. While the players spend a lot of time and money on it, their life is only less boring akin to an addict’s life being less boring when they’re on a high.
    • pawelmurias 4y ago
      Actually it's the opposite, the mobiles games are less fun for playing because they are optimized for addiction rather than fun.
      • 4y ago
• richardfey 4y ago
  Are other articles there paid advertorials? Like this one: - https://gamerant.com/diablo-immortal-new-players/ https://gamerant.com/diablo-immortal-new-players/ "Why Diablo Immortal Is The Best Franchise Jumping On Point"
  • de6u99er 4y ago
  • seattle_spring 4y ago
    No? Longtime Diablo franchise fan here. Immortal has been a blast without spending any money at all.
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• sbagel 4y ago
  Loot boxes/gacha games are the modern day cigarettes. Harmful, addictive, marketed to minors and very lucrative. Rest of the world needs to catch up to Belgium and Netherlands in banning these.
• supernes 4y ago
  Fans have dubbed it "Diablo Immoral" and say that it goes far beyond what other mobile titles infamous for their monetization have done.
  • tuvan 4y ago
    It really doesnt. Fans are just upset the Diablo name was stained with this practice. You are looking at this level of spend required for pretty much any mobile gacha game
    • makeitdouble 4y ago
      > As of right now, F2P players cannot earn top-rated Legendary Games, which are only available via some of the game's monetization options, This was true for earlier games that have been burned to the ground at that point. From the arricle: > As of right now, F2P players cannot earn top-rated Legendary Games, which are only available via some of the game's monetization options Which of the current major mobile gacha games does have this kind of exclusive pay-only items mechanics ?
      • tuvan 4y ago
        Thats true. This is extra scummy. I was just talking about the cost to max out mobile gacha games.
    • supernes 4y ago
      It's not just the amount of money they try to get people to spend, it's some really obnoxious tactics, like NPCs telling you they "don't run a charity" (i.e. steering you into spending real money) and paid bonuses that you lose if you don't login daily (as opposed to free ones in most other games).
      • mynameisvlad 4y ago
        Neither of those sound unique to Diablo Immortal. Several games employ the "purchase a daily bonus" mechanic. Diablo also has several free login bonuses, like the daily kills and the blue crest (which granted, is a way to push purple crests, but it's still a daily free item).
• eterm 4y ago
  And it's barely even a new game, an absolute ton of assets are immediately obvious as very lazily recycled from diablo 3.
  • throwuxiytayq 4y ago
    Reminds me of Bethesda's Blades, an even lazier p2w mobile title which reuses a lot of Skyrim assets. (Don't check it out, it's not worth your time.)
• can16358p 4y ago
  While I definitely don't like pay-to-win monetization style, what I find even more ridiculous is the laws at Belgium and Netherlands around loot boxes. I mean, no one is forcing anyone to play a game or purchase a lootbox. Why ban a game mechanics for this? It hurts the (potential) players, let people decide for themselves FFS.
  • vhgyu75e6u 4y ago
    Because the monetization mechanics in this games rely on predatory practices employed by casinos which we already regulate?
    • can16358p 4y ago
      Predatory? Casinos shouldn't be regulated too. If nobody is forcing anyone to attend into something (like going to a casino or playing a pay-to-win game) nobody should have the right to change or regulate the inner dynamics. As long as the game doesn't clearly lie (e.g. telling a lootbox does something that it doesn't) everybody knows what a lootbox is. Playing the game is a voluntary action taken by an individual, just like going to a casino. They are responsible for their own actions, and blocking a certain demographics' (e.g. people in Netherlands) to access to a game/mechanics (e.g. Diablo Immortal + lootboxes) is fundamentally against people's freedom of choosing to play a game or not. It's their money, they can spend $1m if they want to, on lootboxes. Would I? Definitely not. But blocking someone who does want to from doing it, whereas it doesn't have negative effects to society (e.g. Doesn't affect anyone but the person themselves) is ridiculous.
      • vkou 4y ago
        > Casinos shouldn't be regulated too. If nobody is forcing anyone to attend into something (like going to a casino or playing a pay-to-win game) nobody should have the right to change or regulate the inner dynamics. In theory, humans are rational, and in theory, spherical cows are an excellent basis for economics. Human brains have bugs, and these industries exploit them. It's predatory, and utterly reprehensible.
• seydor 4y ago
  Why is that considered a lot? People pay more for e.g sports memorabilia
  • EB-Barrington 4y ago
    I'll go out on a limb and say that spending 110k on a video game is considered "a lot" by 100% of all humans, rounded to the closest percent.
    • donatj 4y ago
      People put tens of thousands of hours into these sorts of games though to get equipment. Put that same time into a minimum wage job and we’re approaching the same amount of money. Seems relatively fair.
  • gspr 4y ago
    Those sports memorabilia are at least traded on a market, and thus hold and retain that "investment". Not that sports memorabilia make much sense to me either, but at least you get something of proven value.
    • Ekaros 4y ago
      Proven value might be stretch, but at least theoretical chance to finding bigger fool. And thus recouping some of the cost.
• mywaifuismeta 4y ago
  I regularly play games with gambling (gacha) mechanics and I love them. The short bursts of fun are exactly what I'm looking for in my current busy life. I have nothing against this model of monetization. Gambling is fun. Casinos are fun. I am not a big spender by any means, but I've probably spent ~$2k on these kind of games over the past two years or so. I don't regret it, and for me the fun is in figuring out how to maximize the value of my spending by doing the math for different types of purchases, sometimes even coding up simulations. The problem starts when it's unregulated and you are tricking kids, or people who are not educated about probability, into spending their money in casinos, and use dozens of psychological tricks to do so and obfuscate purchases. Just like it's easy for kids to get addicted to social media like Instagram, it's easy and dangerous to get addicted to gambling (especially when you see your friends or popular streamers doing it). I believe all of these games should be 18+, at the very least, and come with a big warning sign.
  • BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Heroin is fun too, at least at first. The problem with gambling is that it taps into the dopamine system in ways that people are not aware of, even if they know about probabilities. The effect is cumulative, and the more the person gambles, the more they will gamble, take risks, create unbalance and spend money. Now, just like with anything related to dopamine, many people will only have a mild effect. E.G: I've played dota for a while, and never went into full spending mode. Like you, I think it's ok to gamble once in a while, to pay for the game. After all, it's fun, and the game provides pleasurable moments, but does cost a lot of resources to develop. It's fair to give money to the company making it: after all, other games may be paid up to $60, DLC not included, while free to play are always up to date. Yet, it's very difficult to evaluate if the tactics used by the game for gambling are twisted or not, and if the game target is going to be abused or not. For this reason, I do think they should be heavily regulated, not just about the age, but about the nature, and intensity, or the gambling mechanism in place.
    • yuzugit 4y ago
      I work on video games (not on the design side but programming) and had to implement some on those systems on several mobile games. I agree with the comment above that it’s hard to draw the line between gambling addiction and à faire amount of random that brings fun to a game. Diablo 2 has already those kinds of random behavior to retain your attention and trigger dopamine rushes but without trying to grab cash from you. The only solution to me is legal regulation, companies won’t listen as it brings money and most people like to play them. Features like battle pass for example are pretty moral and a good balance between making the game profitable, having a rétention and not milk users. I hope EU will flag lootboxes based games as casino games globally and that other big countries will follow (like Korea, Japan and USA) to stop this trend and force designer to find better mechanics. Also users should also be educated to pay for a game that they enjoy. Nowadays with all the free services, it’s harder to make users pay for something they can get for « free » elsewhere. So it’s a complicated issue.
• gambiting 4y ago
  The thing is - is it necessary to have the best gear to enjoy the game? As a different example - I'm sure it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to max out your characters and gear in Genshin Impact, but I've played very enjoyable 100h+ and it's perfectly fine even if you don't have the max ascended characters and gear, I have a feeling those are there basically for the wales to spend money on but aren't necessary for gameplay in any way(well maybe for some crazy hardcore end game content, but as always, that seems to be something 0.0001% of the playerbase enjoys). My point is - the game can still be enjoyable and worth playing even if you can't get the endgame gear. Is that the case here? I don't know.
  • aeturnum 4y ago
    I feel the same way. I don't have too many compunctions about games whose revenue models gate the top 5% of possible progress. If Diablo 3 had a feature where you need to pay money to unlock the last 10% of each primal ancient item (so F2P would only get 90% perfect rolls), I don't think my game play experience would change in the least and I've put a lot of hours into that game. Games should not be about wringing money out of people - but games need to get revenue somewhere. Asking everyone to pay before playing at all is not a clearly better (or more moral) system.
  • ValentinPearce 4y ago
    A big part of Diablo (or at least of Diablo 3) once the story is finished is to go as far as possible in the post game features. Most people I know who have played Diablo would tell me their rift tier, paragon level (might be a different term in English but they play in french so that's the term I know). So for new players, it might not be that big of a deal, but for players wanting to play more Diablo the game is telling them to cough up as much as they can
    • gambiting 4y ago
      Well yes, the question is, when is a hardcore player going to run into this limit? After 20 hours? 50? 200? The further it is along the line, the fewer people it's going to affect. If you can have a great experience for the first 100 hours, that's still pretty good in my book.
• Grollicus 4y ago
  The worst thing (for me) about this is that whenever I go to the Apple App store I get bombarded will all these "games" that just try to make my life actively worse. I don't understand why they pollute their brand like that.
  • languageserver 4y ago
    This is made by the company that gave us Warcraft III reforged. A money grab that made the game worse and ruined the already existing game. they have no goodwill.
    • creakingstairs 4y ago
      It was very surprising how bad reforged was when brood war remake was excellent. Even Diablo 2 remake was great.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • Hermel 4y ago
    That's the key! The Play Store and the App Store do not even have a search filter for games without in-app purchases. I'm sure that is on purpose.
    • snikeris 4y ago
      The trouble is that sometimes in-app purchases means the game is a demo, and you use the in app purchase to buy the full game. There are good games that follow this model that you’ll miss out on if you filter out in app purchases.
      • toxik 4y ago
        Perhaps they would stop doing that if such a filter existed in the first place.
    • voganmother42 4y ago
• coolgoose 4y ago
  This somehow makes me happy that it's banned in the Netherlands as gambling.
• einrealist 4y ago
  If Microsoft wouldn't buy ATVI (at a higher price than the current stock price), I would have sold my shares months ago. I don't have any hope for ATVI anymore. Instead of providing value to their customers - the gamers, they squeeze it for shareholders. I doubt, Diablo 4 will be any different.
• Shadonototra 4y ago
  Activision/Blizzard wants to destroy thier IP and reputation to compete with asian companies This shit should have been regulated 10 years ago already PC gaming is becoming infected too It's very sad Yet another company i will boycott
• bitwize 4y ago
  What? Do you guys not have $110,000?
  • still_grokking 4y ago
    In today's world it's hard to tell whether the parent comment is sarcasm or meant seriously. I'm kind of worried about that.
    • bootloop 4y ago
      True, but this in particular is a reference: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-you-guys-not-have-phones https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-you-guys-not-have-phones
      • still_grokking 4y ago
        Oh, I did not got this reference. Thanks for explaining. Than that comment is even more to the point than I thought! At least now I'm sure it deserves an up-vote — as your helpful comment does.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• kybernetyk 4y ago
  I'm glad I don't have time to play video games. The industry is getting worse and worse every year. (I thought my WoW addiction back in the day was bad - but at least the spending was capped at 13 Eur/month).
• narrator 4y ago
  Sometimes I see ads for mobile games and I get curious about them. Then I go to youtube and watch the playthrough videos and realize just how much of my life and money I could waste on what turns out to be 100s of hours of mostly random button mashing. The Kim Kardashian video game playthrough is a good one if you really want to dig deep into the depths of consumerist nihilism[1]. Anyway, doing the playthrough, or watching a video game speed run is enough to spoil the whole game for me and make me not want to play it. Problem solved. Also, there's all the free to play retrogames out there which are great if you just have endless amounts of free time. I guess I just don't get gambling, especially when you can't actually win money. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhizrsqMV8A&list=PL9aL0Ok5sssdvvr2vC-u16Spq8mJGsrWp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhizrsqMV8A&list=PL9aL0Ok5ss...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• beebeepka 4y ago
  Oh yeah? Next year it will be 220k. For me, Blizzard has always been the WarCraft 1-2 and StarCraft 1-2 company. Never liked the rest of their output over the years. That said, it's a shame the company has been reduced to a gambling shop. Sign of the times, I guess. The writing was on the wall 10 years ago but I am no longer scared about my hobby. So what if the big guys all do lootboxes. Don't buy from them. Activision used to have stellar catalogue 15 years ago. Now look at them. It's all junk
• nanaboo 4y ago
  Let NFTs take care of it. In-game skins are going nowhere, let a government force the company into creating a package with however many skins they want (maybe based on prior sales or realistic expectations) per season (whatever their season looks like) and walk away from it. You know they won't be able to add more. Because what's stopping them now to change the decimal point however they see fit. I suppose the same could be done with progression (where the real money is). Either make it tradeable somehow and lock it down, or outright ban it and allow for more expensive but regulated skins be the only funding capital.
• damowangcy 4y ago
  If I can find more progress than in my real life, 110k is a fair trade. (joke) The flip side is, no matter how the general public criticize or hate it, it works and at times, more profitable than most startups nowadays. The game was delayed for more than one whole year as they try to fix things up, 110k is probably an optimized figure. That say, the game is enjoyable better than most mobile rpg but brings nothing new to the table. I would prefer it to be a pay once and for expansion though.
• workingon 4y ago
  Anyone play WOTV? It’s a gacha that seems slightly less gacha then a lot of these.
• Havoc 4y ago
  This sort of stuff reminds me that I've got 200+ unplayed games in my steam library. Of which presumably at least 10 are excellent, so think I shall pass on this slot machine game and play something else.
• rvba 4y ago
  I wonder if there is some board / book where you can find those psychologists hired to milk money from whales. Nearly all those predatory companies have those desingers / psychologists who try to invent varioua tricks to get money from whales. Obviously they also need to make the game fun enough so new players come and are converted to whales. Are there any resources that show player churn? Blizzard allready has/had Hearthstone that was very expensive (500 dollars per quarter to have most cards), but Im not sure if this didnt kill the game for 'average' players.
• lekevicius 4y ago
  It's even more frustrating, because the game is good. I really enjoyed playing the first 30 levels or so. Good story, good controls, very satisfying gameplay. If I could pay $60 and just have a "classic" Diablo on my phone, I might. But I won't spend a cent on consumable in-app purchases. It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".
  • Plasmoid 4y ago
    Yatzhee posted a video on how the mobile gaming space is basically dead because of this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q30qZSEnI9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q30qZSEnI9Q
    • bckr 4y ago
      you know, this helped me realize why I rage-quit C&C Rivals. I was having a lot of fun, thinking I'm good at the game, going on 40-game win streaks.... then suddenly I am facing opponents with characters 2 levels above mine, getting creamed 90% of games and coming nowhere near being able to upgrade my characters... unless I spend and unknown amount of money on crates. So, I'm not just a quitter, I ran into the trap.
  • permo-w 4y ago
    it's the exact model that has taken over everything, just wearing a slightly different coloured hat. give you the item for free or at a discount, then desperately try to enslave you to their payment model people have been getting loans, mortgages and paying rent for centuries, but now it's moved onto phones, cars, apps, games, SAAS, free trials for streaming services, klarna, etc, etc, etc they're all some variation on rent-seeking behaviour, they just vary in the form rent takes, and how they put the product in your hands in the first place more modern iterations often don't forcibly take the rent, but use social pressures to coerce their userbase to the point where a % "voluntarily" pay rent. some still do forcibly take the rent. the end result for you is a product in your hands, nearly always for cheaper than it would have been 15 years ago, but at either a lower quality, or a higher future cost the end result for the "landlord" is almost a guarantee of projected earnings
• RektBoy 4y ago
  Game is coded horribly, nearly no server-side checks on gameplay actions. What I found so far.. speedhack, insta-ability spam, immortality(hehe). Looking for force-invite into party and drop exploit. So far nothing. Pouring more hours into this, let's see on twitch ;-)
  • aliswe 4y ago
    link?
    • mrits 4y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/DiabloImmortal/comments/v4n35m/hackers_rampant_in_endgame_speedhack_immortality/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DiabloImmortal/comments/v4n35m/hack...
  • sitzkrieg 4y ago
    lmfao what a garbage game. so much clientside. this should be the top concern considering it sidesteps all of the above issues completely but maybe people wont realize till people and one shot in their games
  • BlueTemplar 4y ago
    AFAIK it's very rare for games to implement checks like these. Only the most competitive, most popular ones tend to. Also the always online DRM requirement has been creeping up, since having the game servers mandatorily under the full control of the company makes some of these mitigations easier.
• INGELRII 4y ago
  Regulation proposal: Set maximum spending limit/time tied to the purchase price. The limit is tied to account and player character. example: 1. free-to-play: $100/year. 2. other: 10×purchase price/year. For a $50 game the maximum spending is $500 per year. This would not set hard limit. It would only mandate up-front investment related to the amount of in-game spending. A Whale who spends $10k a year would have to pay $1k to get started. I think this would effectively kill addictive impulse for people who can't afford it. At the same time it allows games to create expensive games.
  • encrux 4y ago
    This would pretty much kill the current industry (*as we know it). F2P/mobile games are monetized through Wales, but they're only willing to spend if there's enough incentive (e.g. prestige). That's not given if there's no F2P player base, because the base game would be too expensive. IMHO the best way to go about is to vote with your wallet. There are plenty of worthwhile games where you don't have to be a whale to be successful.
    • INGELRII 4y ago
      It was thought that people would use less restaurants and bars if smoking was forbidden. It's more likely that when incentives change, the whole customer base changes. The current system of preying whales to pay for games has negative externalities for gamer's who don't have addiction. Playing is cheaper, but people play less games because addictive spending mechanics is affecting where the game development money goes. Regulation would create incentives to make games that are expensive because they are so good.
      • Aerroon 4y ago
        Regulation would create an incentive to region lock out the areas that regulate it. Now you have people from the regulating country use VPNs to play the game in another region instead.
        • 4y ago
• DaveSapien 4y ago
  There will be, for sure, lives ruined because of this game's predatory practices. It really sickens me. To quote myself from a previous thread: "If you could hear the contempt that "some" game devs have for their customers, you might never buy a game ever again. It really is quite shocking...and the contempt exists from top to bottom, its everywhere. That isn't to say there's not a vast number of of honourable people in the industry, not at all. It's only to say that we as a whole are allowing the demons run amok. I have seen the damage that compulsive behaviour can do to our most vulnerable in society. Lives ruined, homelessness, suicide, familial dissolution, the list goes on. Children, people with mental dysfunctions, suffers of brain injuries, even people with Parkinson's disease (on l-dopa for example)"
  • curiousgal 4y ago
    • arkitaip 4y ago
      Why?
      • curiousgal 4y ago
        Is it really a sickening issue? Like come on. I am not saying this predatory behavior isn't an issue but it is far from sickening in the grand scheme of things.
        • skohan 4y ago
          It might not be the greatest evil on earth, but knowingly preying on vulnerable people in society, and causing harm for your own benefit, to me is sickening and evil.
          • curiousgal 4y ago
            That's the thing though, vulnerable people in society don't have access to $110k.
• elif 4y ago
  It's like, gaming used to have some gambling flavor elements to it, but since ~2020 they gave up moderating it and everyone decided to go all-in on gamba. CSGO skin cases were meme-ably game-able, and I'm sure some people lost their livelihood, but it certainly wasn't conditioning EVERY CHILD that played to casually walk that line deeper and deeper... What we have now is sickening. The stance of NL and belgium of just banning all games that have gambling elements, is truly the only path forward. There will be no self-regulation. The studios have to be stopped from selling to care anymore.
  • ascar 4y ago
    This effectively needs at least the same kind of regulation as Casinos. It's nothing else than gambling, arguably much worse and predatory in luring you in and making you spend money.
  • gonzo41 4y ago
    It's kind of sad really, because the generation that's talking about this here are the same the people that had the best, and least adulterated versions of gaming growing up. So the grew up and ruined games going forward by making them only about money.
    • dylan604 4y ago
      Who did it? The gamers playing those games you just steamrolled, or the investors in the gaming companies that mandated to do whatever to make games more profitable? What generation those investors came from isn't relevant as these types of investors are in every generation as investors were not required to be gamers but just "savvy" business types.
      • gonzo41 4y ago
        Truthfully, its on the developers. Developer Talent could walk, but I suspect golden handcuffs and willful ignorance.
        • 4y ago
• 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  As an iOS user, I will be downloading this and giving it one star and a scathing review.
• 29athrowaway 4y ago
  It is almost as if it was an offseason April's fools joke. It needs a review like this: https://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA https://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA
• swarnie 4y ago
  Anyone who buys from EA/Blizz at this point should know what to expect and should be punished for their appalling life choices. Game company does something shitty > You all still buy it anyway like good little sheep > Repeat... Source: I had to credit card charge back sim city 5 in 2013 and never dealt with this joke company again.
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  I feel sorry for today’s gamers. When I was a gamer during the Quaje2 era, my “addiction” was in trying to be the best. Immediately after school, I would practice various maps to understand their jumping kinetics and would spend time studying and understanding all the weapon shots/kill zones to the pixel level. No money was spent on the ‘addiction for excellence’. These days, I actually miss this type of addiction, the one where you want to excel at a skill-based game. (Mostly a matter of not having time)
  • djhworld 4y ago
    Eh, the gaming industry and the amount of games you can play is so vast these days you can still play games without having to invest further amounts to progress. Yes there are loot box games and so on, but in reality they're a small subset. Admittedly if you primarily play mobile games then that subset is quite large. Stick with console/PC, be suspicious of free to play and you'll be fine.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Something about the paradox of choice makes me wonder whether it’s a worse situation because more fragmentation means fewer shared experiences…
  • wincy 4y ago
    My introduction to coding was making Quake engine maps for the Jedi Knight game as a young teenager. It was super fun and I guess Minecraft or Roblox is similar to this but adding money to it kind of makes the whole thing icky and exploitative.
• superkuh 4y ago
  Another problem with Diablo Immortal is that they gimped the game to allow for people using mobile devices to play it. It's really weird to see a Diablo game where inventory management doesn't play a big role.
• friendlypeg 4y ago
  I have been playing and enjoying the game for the past few days. The P2W gem system can be ignore entirely by most players unless you want to become the best in leaderboard. Overall the monetization is on par with other mobile games. The only reason this gets so much attention is because Blizzard is a easy target to generate outrages and clicks these days.
  • devoutsalsa 4y ago
    Does it get ridiculously hard or monotonous without purchasing add ons?
    • heretogetout 4y ago
      Diablo is the king, or at least a well-placed prince, of monotonous gameplay.
      • GekkePrutser 4y ago
        True, this seems to be Blizzard's thing. I also hated WoW for this reason, I played along with friends but it took me 3 years to teach level 60
        • BlueTemplar 4y ago
          WoW is much worse than Diablo on that front...
          • Skunkleton 4y ago
            Is it though? Diablo 100% grind after the story (which can be completed in a few sittings).
            • BlueTemplar 4y ago
              Yes, but the combat is the core gameplay loop, and it's fun - unlike in WoW having to suffer through one after another fetch quest and the "real game" only starting after you hit max level...
• dt3ft 4y ago
  ...aaand this is exactly why I refuse to "play" such "games".
• somehnacct3757 4y ago
  Honestly that's pretty cheap for a F2P game. The most financially successful F2P games will have planned for spend to 'go infinite'. This may be by setting up money fights on a ranked ladder, or constantly rotating out characters so that spenders have to reset progress. The fact that you can max out in Diablo Immortal, and so cheaply, shows Blizzard still hasn't learned what F2P is all about. They are listening too much to their Gamer customers who are a microscopic piece of their TAM and unlikely to source many whales. Whales are incredibly wealthy people for whom $110k is weekend fun money. Gamers are a cohort that like to brag about fun hours per dollar. They're budget customers. Blizzard thinks that you make console & PC games on mobile and you make mobile money. A lot of game companies from the before-mobile-times think this is a formula. And their customers egg them on. But if you build the mobile game those customers want, you will lose money at worst and leave money on the table at best. Talking 90% of the money still on the table. Blizzard's biggest problem is perhaps that their IP appeals only to Gamers, who as a culture resist F2P business models (budget customers.) This article is one such example, meant to stoke outrage within that group. The people who are going to spend $110k on Diablo Immortal don't read Gamer media, or even consider themselves Gamers. They've never been on Twitch and they don't have Steam accounts. Gamers think they are the center of the gaming universe but mobile gaming audiences have turned them into a niche audience in less than a decade. I think Blizzard should give up at this point and keep making games mech-aesthetically tailored for the budget Gamer audience. Blizzard and Gamers alike think WoW was a huge gaming phenomenon but on the mobile scale it registers somewhere around Subway Surfers. Blizzard IP does not splash with mobile audiences. When a Gamer brand enters the mobile market it's akin to releasing a video game movie in theaters. Diablo Immortal is a lot closer to Mario Bros Movie than Sonic Movie in that analogy.
  • friendlypeg 4y ago
    They also have very tame monetization in their upcoming Warcraft mobile game when compared to the game it's cloning - Clash Royale. There are no loot boxes and you can buy character outright. Still the announcement was met with mixed reactions. Maybe Blizzard's reputation has been so tarnished that even that is not enough and they need to forgo any mechanism that can be remotely considered giving paying customer advantages. The thing is Activision has already successfully brought its flagship title Call of Duty to the mobile with only cosmetic store and making banks with it. So I disagree with you that Blizzard will be leaving money on the table by following that route. It would be interested to see how well Diablo Immortal is going to do considering how much bad press it gets. Like you said the mobile gaming population is so much bigger than the PC one, but I question if the former are really immune to the opinions from YouTuber, social media and word of mouth from their friends.
• mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
  That is an outrageous amount of money on a game, the article did also say it would take 10 years to amass all that, which is still almost $1k per month. If that amount of gear were resellable in a marketplace then some of the moral arguments are empty. And I bet it wouldn’t be an astronomical amount because there is a random loot box/gambling/prize factor in acquiring gear in that game. It doesn’t matter the technology behind a marketplace, SQL+CRUD and CC payments or blockchain+NFT, it’s tracking a receipt of purchase on digital items. Some would argue that blockchain is a stupid choice of technology but I would counter that the tech world has taken tech and bent it into a different purpose than intended with much success. For example, a documentation technology and protocol (HTML and HTTP) was intended for scientists to link documents to each other. We’ve taken that and bent it into complete client/server applications.
• pfdietz 4y ago
  P2W is getting a lot of flak, but any game where you have to do not-fun grinding to get to the "good part" is effectively P2W. You are trading something of value, your time, not because the activity is fun, but because it gives you power to then enjoy the game. It's P2W, just not using currency. And this trade is arguably worse overall for society than P2W using money. In that, you are producing something of value for society to get that money; in grind-to-win, you are producing nothing of value for society (and the game company gets no compensation as a result.) The cost of a grindy game can be shockingly high, if you bother to compute the value of the time you are spending on it. That you find the grind tolerable doesn't reduce this cost.
  • Ruthalas 4y ago
    I think a big part the problem is that of you include a cash shop of some sort in your game, the incentive immediately shifts to maximize the grind as much as your players are likely to tolerate. The more you can successfully push this, the more money the time-saving items you sell will turn a profit. So any game that includes this sort of transactional mechanic has a strong perverse incentive to waste your time.
• Dunban4 4y ago
  Instead of government, an industry standard: total microtransaction purchases cannot exceed the full market price of the game. If the purchase limit is reached, every microtransaction item is unlocked unconditionally. - DLCs are not microtransactions but they must add either new features or narratives.
  • maccard 4y ago
    What's the full market price of a f2p game? Why is it ok for narrative content to be considered a DLC but cosmetic content to be considered microtransactions?
    • Dunban4 4y ago
      > Many non-F2P MMOs have a subscription model instead. The market price quota would be based on the market price of subscriptions > Assets such as new models and textures are the simplest skeletons of a game. A new feature is comparable to a side game and a narrative could be an entire game on its own ie: CYOA To clarify, the 2 criterions should be 'best practices' and not hard enforceable rules. However, games that don't adhere to the best practice should have the stigma associated with the ratings M or AO. An adult should be capable of judging the poor value of microtransactions and have the choice to suffer the consequences of consensual decisions at their own expense.
      • maccard 4y ago
        > To clarify, the 2 criterions should be 'best practices' and not hard enforceable rules. However, games that don't adhere to the best practice should have the stigma associated with the ratings M or AO. An adult should be capable of judging the poor value of microtransactions and have the choice to suffer the consequences of consensual decisions at their own expense. What makes you think that it's children being exploited and not adults? I've worked on a few f2p multiplayer games and the player bases are usually older than you are implying. It's not 12 year olds using their parents credit cards the vast majority of the time (and when it is, its rare enough that there's a news story about it).
• tekbog 4y ago
  I don't understand why people are still surprised about Blizzard shenanigans. The golden era was 20 years ago, let it go. Every new game from the last five years has been a disaster in one way or the other. They are even managing to slowly kill their never-ending holy cow: World of Warcraft.
• MrMan 4y ago
  swgoh has a multi hundred k cot to max everything
• INTPenis 4y ago
  This seems like a perfect time to point out how well Diablo 2 Resurrection works with a gamepad. I hooked my 55" Acer monitor over DP to my PC, just start Diablo 2 through Proton, move the window over to the Acer monitor, sit back in my favorite chair and hack and I slash away til my heart's content.
• stevenjgarner 4y ago
  I am not a gamer, but I am fascinated by all manner of monetization. Is Diablo Immortal unique as a free-to-play game that has a microtransaction model to support continued development, or do other games do this? It seems the equivalent of the freemium model with web applications. Does buying the so-called Legendary Gems enhance "winning" or just game playing? And can "winning" result in a financial reward (like in League of Legends, Super Smash Bros., EVO 2022, Mistplay, etc)? I read that "the 1% of top professional gamers make tens of millions of dollars per year with a combination of sponsorships, ad revenue, and subscriber dues". [1] Mind blowing. [1] https://thinkcomputers.org/odds-of-gaming-earning-you-money/ https://thinkcomputers.org/odds-of-gaming-earning-you-money/
  • mattnewton 4y ago
    > Does buying the so-called Legendary Gems enhance "winning" or just game playing? Yes. Look up “gacha games” [0] for the broader category. One very successful and very rich version of this genre is “genshin impact” > And can "winning" result in a financial reward In this case, no, not currently. People tend to structure competitive scenes around games without these mechanics but it could be done by the company developing the game. People are playing for the satisfaction of winning rare items or beating other people on a leaderboard. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game
    • stevenjgarner 4y ago
      For a programmer, are those gacha "vending machines" available in code libraries? I would love to experiment with implementing one in a productivity web application.
      • mattnewton 4y ago
        I am not sure I understand what you mean. The core mechanic is that rewards are randomly distributed - the namesake “gacha” machines dispense a capsule with a random toy. Think of it as a slot machine where if it hits you get an item you wanted / needed for gameplay and if it doesn’t it just took your money and gave you something useless.
• sextus_prop 4y ago
  This is a culmination of a trend that has been going on for at least a decade: First it was the lootboxes that became widespread: ~2010 Steam Team Fortress 2, later Counter Strike 2012 EA's Mass Effect 3 2014 Call of Duty and Battlefield 2016 Overwatch After that it seemed lootboxes were everywhere. In 2017 there was some backlash for EA's Star Wars game and they removed lootboxes, but it did not change the situation overall. Then in 2020 western gamers were exposed to gacha mechanics with the release of Genshin Impact, where you "roll" with special currency for weapons and characters that you can't get otherwise. And this currency is either bought with real money or VERY slowly accumulated by playing game. The game is free to play otherwise. In february this year there was a western release of Lost Ark - MMO ARPG(genre similar to Diablo) that involves probabilistic gear upgrades where you either play weeks to months to fully upgrade it, or drop hundreds to thousands of dollars on upgrade materials, game itself is free to play. It was backed by Amazon and promoted by huge Twitch events. Both Genshin Impact and Lost Ark have very impressive amount of content, beautiful visuals, music - all while being free to play. Could these games be made and succeed without gambling mechanics? I don't know. My experience with Genshin has been that I got a lot more out of it in terms of fun per money spent than out of most from what I buy on Steam sales - which I play for few hours and forget. I think the regulations about these kinds of games should at the very least require devs to: - State all the probabilities - Define a guarantee or a "pity": at which attempt will you succeed with 100% probability. Then for each desired outcome, e.g. fully upgrading weapon, there should be displayed an expected and maximum "price", preferably in real currency. This would at least help the adults to moderate their spending. And as for children, yeah, these games should be 18+, I don't believe a child can handle the urge to spend in these games.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • crazypyro 4y ago
    There is a large difference in lootboxes that have the ability to give you more power in the game versus lootboxes that just drop new cosmetic items with no gameplay affect. Some of those games that you mentioned only contained cosmetic items in the lootboxes. Gamers as a community have a much more visceral reaction to paying for power in the game, compared to paying for cosmetics.
• Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  Micropayments and ad-games ruined video games. It‘s depressing.
  • actually_a_dog 4y ago
    How can micropayments have ruined anything? Nobody's found a way to implement micropayments in a way that works, to my knowledge.
• ir193 4y ago
  mobile games: gambling + porn, but legal
• wly_cdgr 4y ago
  Eh, whatever. It's not like it's an esport. Let the whales subsidize everyone else if they want
• remram 4y ago
  Isn't that a good thing? The fact that there is so much content that getting the best version of every item cannot happen, even if you spend some money? Is a game fair only if you can acquire the best gear in the game (for real money)?
  • Timshel 4y ago
    Probably depends of your definition of content and tie with the discussion around Gacha game. The part discussed here with the gem system looks more like a slot machine than anything I would describe as game content.
    • remram 4y ago
      Well for sure I don't know much about the game. If it's bad or uses predatory tactics to get people's money then that is awful. This specific point though, summed up in the title, seems kind of weird. Like imagine if someone said the same thing about EVE Online, how much does a "fully geared up" space station cost? How much is the combined cost of Team Fortress 2's (cosmetic) items?
  • zmgsabst 4y ago
    I think the problem is that having such a high peak implies you’ll have “pay to win” mechanics dominate: Players will be stratified by how much of that $110,000 they can pay — with no reasonable way out of that class system.
• totorovirus 4y ago
  check out how much money koreans spend on Lineage. 110k? that's actually pretty affordable https://www.mmobomb.com/news/player-spent-3-5-million-lineage-m-gets-angry-rollback-blocks-ncsoft-parking-lot https://www.mmobomb.com/news/player-spent-3-5-million-lineag...
• jordan801 4y ago
  Here's the problem with this game: - Blizzards slew of beloved franchises makes it easy to entrap nostalgia addicted masses to a number of pay to win clones. Or slowly implement these types of features into existing games. - Half of the assets are from a 10 year old prequel. This game was cheap to make and will have an insanely high profit margin. Leading to perpetuation of this model. - Scummy mobile pay to win is already accepted as the standard for mobile. With a desktop port, Blizzard can expand that complacency to further markets. - Pay to Win models incentivize paid content over legitimate, engaging content. I.e. story, character models and gameplay will deteriorate overtime in favor of producing content that turns profit. This is inevitable though.
  • erulabs 4y ago
    I don't think its inevitable and I don't think it's a good long term monetization strategy. It's just short term planning with complete disregard for the long term health of the company. How the board of directors doesn't see this is shocking. Maybe they do and also want to milk it today instead of tomorrow just like the C-suite. Yes, exploitative mobile gaming is profitable as hell - but in the current world is alienating your extremely loyal (and higher earning) fan-base worth it? Either way, it's a shame and a waste of a lot of really great IP that will be buried alive when the coffin that is Blizzard is lowered into the ground.
    • VHRanger 4y ago
      > I don't think it's a good long term monetization strategy You can look at plenty of games that have lived for a long time on this: - Supercell games (Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Hay Day, etc.) - Genshin Impact - Heartstone and Magic Arena - Rainbow 6 The Division (most profitable Ubisoft game)
      • erulabs 4y ago
        Of those listed I've only played Hearthstone and Clash Royale. I reached top rank in Clash Royale, and I believe I only spent 5 dollars on it to get a neat looking board to play on - so I don't think they generate quite the ill-will that a legendary PC competitive game developer like Blizzard generates when they produce something much worse than most existing (at least in the west) mobile free to play games. My point isn't that these sorts of games aren't profitable - it's that they should have spun up a new studio with a new name instead of lighting the good will of a 25+ year IP that's held so dearly on fire.
• calibas 4y ago
  Being a heroin dealer is such a good business model. Give people a little bit for free until they get addicted, then you start gouging them. If that sounds appealing to you, but you're scared of getting arrested, you can just develop "free to play" games instead.
• mdavis6890 4y ago
  A better way to think about it is that these games are designed for - and paid for by - exactly the very few people who want to spend this much on winning a game. Everybody else gets to free-ride on this, and only pay what they want (mostly zero)
  • hammock 4y ago
    An interesting way to think about it for sure. Sub in “jack daniels” or “bud light” for Diablo and it gets depressing fast when you consider 80% of liquor is consumed by less than 10% of drinkers, who each have an average of 20+ drinks a week, every week (forgive that I cannot source but trust this is based on seeing real data). Still, we must consider that growth is what a company is after, and that growth happens at the margin, not the core.
  • Ruthalas 4y ago
    The problem with this is that games designed to be monetized this way are going to build their progression, reward-systems, cosmetic systems, grind balance, etc. around it. So the players who are "paying what they want (mostly zero)" aren't getting a normal but free Diablo game, they are getting version of that game balanced and prioritized around the whales that /will/ be spending the money. The actual customers. I'd rather pay than "free-ride", because I don't want incessant popups telling me how how I can skip the grind (that is tuned to irritate me) by buying a gems with my credit card. I'm not as valuable to Blizzard/Activision/NetEase with my one-time-purchase though, and they know it.
    • mdavis6890 4y ago
      That's why I don't play these games. But other people have different preferences and that's okay by me. I don't see a need to judge the company(ies), the users, or the system. Not saying you are, but it seems to be the flavor of this article and much of the sentiment in these comments. Why?
      • Ruthalas 4y ago
        I think there's a point where it feels like it's gone beyond simple price discrimination to leveraging hundreds of employees and millions of dollars to actively manipulate and exploit a player base that is often substantially comprised of children. I've watched developer presentations on how best to implement Skinner boxes and other gambling mechanics to help condition users and obscure exactly how much they are spending. That may be fair to judge a company poorly for. For me personally, it represents the fact that the company is actively working against my best interests, and that feels bad. Additionally, completely selfishly, it makes me sad to see games that I would otherwise enjoy be distorted by this sort of monetization.
• balaji1 4y ago
  It's similar to TAM of a customer's wallet within a game - how much max value a user is to the company. Like LTV, "max customer value".
• uejfiweun 4y ago
  I put this game in the same category as Anthem, Fallout 76, and unfortunately many others. No fans wanted it, no developers wanted to make it, nobody cares about it. The only people excited about this are the executives who saw how much money other Mobile / Co-op Multiplayer / Arena shooter / Battle Royale / etc games were making, and are hopeful they can get a piece of the pie. This sort of thing never seems to end well for the game companies that push it. Sometimes though, companies seem to learn from their mistakes on these. EA went from a straight awful company to producing one of my favorite games, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, with no forced multiplayer, no microtransactions, no DLC, just a great game out of the box. So although Blizzard franchises are certainly hurting right now, sometimes the night is darkest just before the dawn, so to speak.
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  • lithos 4y ago
    Anthem would have been great if it was finished. Core movement systems were good, and theming of power armor was great.
• Animats 4y ago
  There are single BAYC NFTs that have sold for more.
  • theptip 4y ago
    But you can easily re-sell that NFT, whereas it’s against the T&C to sell a game account for real money, and it seems there is no “real money cash out” in Immortal. So not really something you can speculate on or trade as far as I can tell.
• minimaxir 4y ago
  Actual lv. 60 player here. (proof: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1533201559776923650 https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1533201559776923650 ) There's an interesting amount of misinformation regarding MTX in Diablo Immortal. But the TL;DR is that the significant gameplay advantages from MTX only really apply at higher Paragon levels, requiring hundreds of hours to hit. The primary way of increasing power before that is the same as it was in any Diablo; get better gear, which can't be accelerated by MTX at all. Hitting lv. 60/completing the main story content is very easy and does not benefit much even if you did spend money to get 5-star Legendary Gems (although there are level gates once you hit lv. 35; daily quests provide the best way to get around those, those aren't paywalls). That takes about 20 hours, which is good value for a free game even if you bounce off.
• reggieband 4y ago
  I know this is a crazy thought and not inline with a lot of the blizzard hate - but why don't games like this allow more gifting style mechanics? I consider the Twitch gift sub market. And I consider that weird crypto game Axie Infinity. It seems we are only considering the purchasing power of whales that want to flex. What about whales that want to collaborate. Whales that want to demonstrate their generosity. I remember a reddit post about a guy who had a rich friend that would constantly take him on wild adventures that the poorer friend couldn't afford. The rich guy didn't care about spending the money and the poor guy was good company. I think an interesting monetization mechanic would be a game where the pay-to-win aspect was in the recruitment and outfitting of other players. So as a poor player I could have the opportunity to earn high-level gear based on the spending of a whale whose campaign I was joining.
  • wbobeirne 4y ago
    You end up with a huge security incentives problem. If there's a way to extract the value from one account and give it to another, you massively increase the incentive to phish users, set up black markets for buying items off of a hacked account, or just transfer it to your own.
    • matthewfcarlson 4y ago
      Why not steal the idea of Pokémon go? Transfer doesn’t go to a person but to an area or group of people. You could pay to unlock an area and take a group of people on a quest. Or perhaps a boost or buff in an area.
    • snek_case 4y ago
      You could set up a payment system to buy items that's not a player account. You buy an item just to give. There's still a phishing incentive, but is it worse than any of the other content you can buy online?
      • Jenk 4y ago
        Credit Card theft/fraud is why. If it was possible to "transfer" funds like this then mechanisms for fraudulent purchases will increase dramatically. Eve Online introduced purchasing in-game currencies because it was rife on the "black market" anyway and they also saw a huge number of fraudulent purchases and/or charge backs. 3rd party grey "broker" sites popped up with way below market rate prices, 99% of which are using fraudulent CCs to fund them, and bot accounts to transfer the in-game stuff.
• stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I don't really see the problem if someone is dumb enough to pay or stupid-rich enough for this to be pocket change. Interesting to see how ridiculous an amount it is though.
• ratonofx 4y ago
  I see no problem about 110k "end game"... 1) If the journey have enough content to sustain a huge grinding time, it's ok. 2) If you can make it expensive without making mandatory (to buy), it's ok. 3) If you build a legit character buying or farming and it can be evaluated at 100k USD, it's pretty awesome! (Check MIR 4 Top Characters Price) But if you play a blizzard game, with no NFT (or Open marketplace) and being treated as criminal if you sell the product of your farming/grinding time, it's pretty fucked up.
• xyst 4y ago
  Gamers of todays generation have been slowly taught to accept this as the new norm. IAPs, DLCs, “pay to win”, and Battle Passes are just acceptable now. Release a half assed game in a few months. Complete the rest of the game on relaxed timeframe and release them as DLCs. Continue to milk the consumer for more $$$. Honestly the entire concept of IAPs is predatory. Consumer protection agencies need to regulate these companies.
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• dumpsterdiver 4y ago
  I’ve played a bit, and the reason I don’t mind the p2w model is because I’ve never tried to compete at that level. Let’s be real, even if it wasn’t pay to win there are still people out there who will be so far ahead of me that it nights as well be. When I played D3 I actually played solo most of the time, really only competing against myself and enjoying the game. One time someone gave me a weapon that let me one shot everything and it honestly ruined the game for me. I deleted and started over because for me the fun is in the journey.
• LoveMortuus 4y ago
  I think these free to play might be more of just 'pick your own price'. That way they get people that wouldn't pay 60$ for a mobile game and also people that would pay 1000$ for a game. While I personally don't like it, because it feels like I'm getting an unfinished game if I don't spend a lot, I'm sure that there are many that enjoy this model and don't mind it at all. And at the end of the day, these people that spend more money are actually the ones that feed the developers~
  • RyEgswuCsn 4y ago
    I think you are right if the game offers mostly single-player experiences, though the developers of such games often implement dark patterns that set players up for spending more than they rationally would. As soon as player-vs-player is introduced, f2p players become part of the "experience" for the whale players.
• jiggawatts 4y ago
  What upsets me is that in exchange for that money you’re treated to a low quality game. You can just feel the disdain for the user/victim at every step. While launching the game for the first time: 1) No sound! 2) Forced subtitles. 3) Visible tearing in the video because of a lack of vsync. 4) Two tracking and notification permission prompts, including one that lies to you: “Your game is better if we can target ads”. 5) Obnoxious tutorial that takes control away from the player. (If an adult spoke like this to me in real life I would slap them for their insolent patronising!) 6) Forced updates. 7) Etc… At this point I deleted then game because I don’t want to be gamed by a mega corp. I’m not a money bag to be tracked and siphoned.
  • shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    >you’re treated to a low quality game You're not only playing a modern Blizzard game, but a mobile one. This should go without saying. :p >Two tracking and notification permission prompts Is one of those the face tracking they put in there to satisfy Chinese government regulations?
  • vhgyu75e6u 4y ago
    I found most of your complains either false or non issue: 1. Ok, maybe a bug. 2. Given that is a mobile game and most people will no have the volume up, it is ok to have subtitles. Not to mention that games that start with subtitles are more accessible and the majority of players actually don't mind them and find them useful. 3. Fair, but given that this is a mobile game, V-sync can be a problem for lower end devices too. 4. False? I cleared the first mission and had no prompt for that and has not requested tracking at all. Android. 5. The hell you talking about? When you start you get a small cut scene and are given full control when they drop you off the ship. 6. The game is mostly online for what I can tell so updates are a given (and you can download areas separately)
    • SapporoChris 4y ago
      Perhaps permission was not asked because permission was previously granted. Example: every time I use Google maps it asks me to turn on location tracking, many people never encounter this because they leave location tracking on.
• ajnin 4y ago
  I hope more country follow suit of Belgium and The Netherlands and classify loot boxes with a random drop element as gambling, and as such make it heavily regulated and banned to kids. This kind of practices are evidently predatorial and manipulative and should be greatly discouraged.
  • qball 4y ago
    >classify loot boxes with a random drop element as gambling Most people who talk about this tend to have no idea what laws already cover gambling. I think that, in this case, loot boxes should be treated like slot machines as far as minimum payout goes; in Nevada (for example) this is minimum 75% by law- meaning that the house must ultimately return 75% of the value it takes in as winnings to its gamblers. As these systems are effectively slot machines (put coin in, pull handle, get box), not much more needs to be done other than applying the law as written. It might be tricky to establish a dollar value for the digital assets paid out, and would add overhead to assets distributed in this manner (how one would put a price on "asset that changes the way the game works" is, of course, an open question), but provided it's done properly should clamp down significantly on the anti-consumer aspects of these practices- which is, I suspect, the real reason everyone complains about this in the first place.
    • callamdelaney 4y ago
      There is 0 value to things that can be generated with in games like the 'loot' from lootboxes. Value is based on a limit in supply, not only demand. The massive possible amount of supply puts the value at $0. It's worse than gambling.
      • qball 4y ago
        >There is 0 value to things that can be generated with in games like the 'loot' from lootboxes. But that's false, on its face in fact- there was development and artist time involved in every step of the process, and that time has a value (and an auditable one, at that). So now that we know what the value is, taking into account that the house can only pay out in those assets, we can in effect determine a maximum profit per asset (as far as the house-player transaction is concerned)- casinos close their doors when the house is no longer able to pay out, and it's no different here.
• account-5 4y ago
  And another reason I don't play computer games
• wodenokoto 4y ago
  I wonder if they started out with a price point of $110k and went from there or it just sorta turned out that way after adding items and timers.