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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. I

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
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
It works. But nowaday, you cannot just be profitable. You gotta make your investers very happy.
- grayfaced 4y ago
  And no matter how well it does, investors will expect growth. So what further sliminess does Diablo Immortals 2 do to get growth? This behavior is unsustainable.
encrux 4y ago
It does work though. "Escape from Tarkov" and "It takes two" are just some of the more noteworthy ones. There's tons more on steam. It's just the mobile market that's screwed entirely. Which I find odd, because I'm convinced there are opportunities for games that work especially well on small screens with touchscreen (like Nintendo demonstrated half a decade before mainstream smartphones)
- skohan 4y ago
  Yes it does work. Elden Ring is another example of a hugely successful product which is solely focused on being an excellent piece of entertainment. It’s just more optimal for Profitability to create addictive garbage like this. Blizzard has chosen to be greedy and predatory rather than trying to create art of entertainment.
  - ChildOfChaos 4y ago
    Whats Elden Ring got to do with it? You are comparing a full AAA game for PC and console made for hardcore gamers versus a mobile game with loot boxes designed to attract and exploit kids or people that addicted to this kinda crap and disguise it like a game, pretty much like slot machine do.
- Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
  Precisely, Nintendo tried a sane sales model with Super Mario Run back in 2016. You would have access to some levels, then pay and unlock the rest. No more in-app purchases, IIRC. The reaction was a lot of angry comments about the game being locked and that it should be free-to-play, etc. Their next games (like Mario Kart Tour) went back to the exploitative loot box model.
  - cehrlich 4y ago
    Mario Run was also just not a very good game (this is obviously an opinion, but still…). I wonder how it would go if Nintendo tried releasing an actual good game for $10 or some other amount, not an infinite runner with a Mario skin.
matwood 4y ago
I've played to around level 30 or so also and it feels just like any other recent Diablo. So far it seems like I can pay to speed things up/improve the drop rate, or just keep playing without just fine. Is there some spot I'm going to hit that I can't progress without paying?
- uberswe 4y ago
  The article mentions that you can get the best gear for free but it will take you about 10 years. So I'm sure you can play it and have fun. If you try PVP however then you would be at a great advantage if you pay money for upgrades.
  - skohan 4y ago
    But these games are explicitly designed to be frustrating and not fun when played for free. The math and game design are expertly crafted to make you play compulsively. They most certainly have been designed to cause psychological pain when you don’t play it you don’t pay. They are not designed to cause fun or joy.
    - toxik 4y ago
      The free aspect is like your heroin dealer going “the first dose is free”. That is exactly what they want you to do.
  - matwood 4y ago
    The article is really quite confusing. Early on it says F2P can't get the best gear, then later says they can. Then they say even for paid players it's random so I'm not even sure how they come up with 100k figure. It's just hard for me to get upset about a game that's always been a pretty skin over a blatant Skinner box.
    - wincy 4y ago
      Yeah I mean the game is intentionally confusing. You have these things called eternal crests which cost 160 “gems” (the real money currency). These let you run a special dungeon that guarantees a drop of a legendary gem rated between 1 and 5 stars. In fact if you fail the dungeon somehow it’ll refund the crest and let you try again. Apparently the drop rate for the 5 star gems is 4.5%, so my napkin math works out to around $50 per 5 star legendary gem. I can’t go back and check my math because I uninstalled the game.
rapind 4y ago
> 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". I think the assumption that another model was even considered is what people are getting wrong. The game was made explicitly and intentionally for this p2w / gamble business model. There was never an attempt to make it anything else. Blizzard lent their IP to make a cash grab. They’re milking their IP while they can, and monitoring both back lash and revenue, and will be repeating it.
Beltalowda 4y ago
> 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". What makes you say that? I mostly play single-player games where I just buy a game and then play it. There are loads of those out there, with more released every week. Even with my underpowered Linux laptop I have plenty to choose from.
- dmix 4y ago
  Diablo 4 will probably just be a normal PC game too. Those freemium mobile games are always scammy but that doesn't mean there aren't endless classic business model games.
  - jnovek 4y ago
    Perhaps. I still plays Diablo 2 and 3 quite a bit. I don’t think I’d call myself a “hardcore” player — I’m not very good — but I’m definitely in the Diablo 4 launch demographic. I’ve been keeping an eye on Diablo Immortal as sort of a canary. I can say with absolute confidence that I won’t be buying D4 at launch if Blizzard doesn’t fix the DI mess. Among longtime players of the franchise, I can’t imagine that I’m alone.
  - adra 4y ago
    A publisher that has tasted fast cheap low value entries has a hard time justifying risky quality entries when the risk of failure is much higher. We're seeing the reality-tv moment in video games with mobile freemiums and it's frightening. I feel like Square-Enix is the perfect nexus if these market forces. I'm not even sure they'll bother with AAAs after making so much money off their low effort mobile cash cows.
    - account42 4y ago
      At least sqeenix just sold off a number of their studios and franchises so at least someone else can still make good games with them.
    - mysterydip 4y ago
wincy 4y ago
I spent $7 and just finished the main storyline. Then I joked to my friends “okay I’m level 60 I’m done now”. But then I thought about it and I uninstalled the game. I beat it, I get how the game works, I got an authentic Diablo experience. I’m done now.
hw 4y ago
Lots of folks disappointed at Diablo Immortal are comparing it to a PC game which it isn’t. It’s a great game that lets you play and experience Diablo on the go, during your lunch breaks, and on the porcelain throne. Once you adjust your expectations and understand that this is a filler game before D4 you’ll see that it’s a great game that can be enjoyed for the content without paying a cent
- wincy 4y ago
  I mean, you can literally play Diablo Immortal on Battle.Net on your PC right now. It’s even advertised for PC.
margaretdouglas 4y ago
The issue is fundamentally that releasing a single game for a single fee yields linear growth, which is to say the amount your growing by is stagnant. Stagnant growth, to an investor, is essentially a signal that your company is currently failing. So unless you can grow your growth, you fail, and the only way to continue growing your growth is if new products remain cash generating indefinitely.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hammock 4y ago
  Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Your insight connects the software industry to the larger macroeconomic environment of low interest rates and growth-seeking (rent-seeking?). A one-off’s sales have a ceiling, where a recurring revenue source is an indefinite fountain of sales. The same could be observed of Hollywood. How much of the derivative sequels, reboots and spin-offs are driven not by a lack of creativity as is often bemoaned, but rather by a greater-than-ever desire to develop “fountains of sales” rather than one-off artistic hits?
hw 4y ago
> 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". Same can be said for software. Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense.
- csa 4y ago
  > Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense. While some businesses abuse SaaS pricing (e.g., MS office for very basic uses, acrobat pro for basic uses, etc.), I think the SaaS pricing model has aligned the interests of developers and consumers (esp. smaller devs and smaller consumers) in a way that has allowed a wider market to have access to a wider range of affordable software and ongoing support/updates than would be possible under the previous system. There are definitely folks, often a small niche, who really just need an old version of a piece of software for one or two small functions, and maybe those folks should be built in to the SaaS pricing model somehow, but overall I think that the merits of SaaS pricing almost always outweigh the demerits by quite a bit.
  - Larrikin 4y ago
    For nearly everything users should be able to pay once and then pay for updates. The model Jet Brains was forced into should be the norm and not the abusive model Apple has normalized and forced onto consumers
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    I still don't understand how people sell small SAAS products with the per-country VAT rules.
    - cherioo 4y ago
      By using SAAS payment product that solves that for them! Which makes for a reasonable SAAS model given changing nature of tax system.
Timshel 4y ago
> 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". What I find really sad is that multiple games have proven that there is a middle ground and that making a f2p while making enormous amount of money is possible (League of Legend ...) and using such predatory system that are so prevalent on mobile is not the only solution. There is probably already enough monetisation around skins in the games that they would have easily turn up a profit. The rest is just greed and disregard for players but then when they don't care that the game is banned in two countries at launch because it violate gambling laws what else to expect ...
- dmarchand90 4y ago
  I believe there is a deep disease of extreme and growing wealth inequality, whose symptoms are erupting in every area of our way of life. This is a good example. In a more wealth equal society you're financial motivated to build good products for all users. Now the entire system is geared to the whims of the rich
  - permo-w 4y ago
    the entire system is geared towards getting money from poor people it's easier to afford ~£5 in 99p microtransactions every month for a year than it is to afford a £60 triple A of course this isn't where the bulk of money comes from for these games (whales), but it's still a big factor
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  If you need to reference LoL/Fortnite to make a point, you are not making a point. In fact, there are very few games that have done the f2p walk successfully, sustainably, and all of them pale in comparison to the few extraordinary exceptions.
  - qrazhan 4y ago
    There are a _ton_ of successful f2p games with reasonable monetization models - Valorant, CSGO, Warzone, Dota, Path of Exile, Lost Ark, Hearthstone, etc. It's just that games in general are a power law industry - I don't think monetization model is really what will prevent a game from being successful. In fact, much of the discourse around Immortal is that the gameplay itself is in fact top notch. Blizzard has the dedicated fanbase to make a healthy profit and more with a reasonable cash shop - they don't _need_ to resort to these extremely cash-grabby mechanics.
Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
Indeed. I'm personally not a victim of loot boxes and exploitative P2W tactics because I just don't buy them. But I just want to pay some amount once and have a good game in my Android phone, without ads and without constantly nagging me to spend more! I'll pay $60 also if the game is good, I just don't want to be put into a Skinner box constantly trying to milk my "engagement" and my pockets. Is that so much to ask? Mind you, there are some games like that (my usual routine is to go to Google Play Games, navigate to the bottom, choose "no ads" and "no in-app purchases"), but it seems that they are like 1% of the total. If you like a specific niche subgenre, a franchise, etc. it's very likely that all games you find will be of the exploitative variety. It's sad that I have a pocket computer with an awesome screen in my hand the whole day, and other cool features like gyroscope, GPS, etc. that can be used for gaming; and I find myself going back to my good old PC (or lately, the Steam Deck) when I want to play.
- rapind 4y ago
  It sucks that the model of pay once ($60) or subscription doesn’t gel with the in-app purchase or advertising models. For example YouTube premium is a worse product than it could be because the entire platform has been designed with advertising and engagement in mind.
  - MrDresden 4y ago
    YT Premium is not the product it could be because it only needs to be better than what it is replacing, or normal YT. Say this as someone who just subscribed this month.
- wincy 4y ago
  It’s even worse on mobile as the app might forcefully update you to a new Free to Play version. I spent $8 on Galaxy On Fire 2 HD which was acquired by another company then suddenly dropped the price and added ads and in app purchases. Very frustrating.
  - eyeownyde 4y ago
    Similar experience for me. I bought the no ads version of plants vs zombies- “no ads” was even in the title. A few years later EA changed the app name and added ads.
peanut_worm 4y ago
Elden Ring was exactly "make good game, sell it" and it sold very well.
- Hemospectrum 4y ago
  The "no longer works" comment clearly refers to the business model, ie. ignoring the quality or popularity of the product itself and just looking at the balance sheet. The gambling (microtransaction) model is enormously more profitable than the classical "just sell a game" model. Elden Ring was spectacularly well received and has sold millions of units, but it's "only" a game. There's no casino in the back, and therefore no gambling-related revenue stream.
  - interroboink 4y ago
    Maybe I misunderstand you, but if the "no longer works" comment refers to the business model as you say, then the person you replied to is saying "no, it can still work as a business model — here's an example." It may not work as well or as easily, but I don't think that's the point being made.
    - Hemospectrum 4y ago
      The customer might want to buy a product, and the studio might want to make it, but isn’t there someone they forgot to ask? Business models that are lower-risk and higher-return are systematically preferred by investors. Games are expensive to make. FromSoft has been successful enough to stay in business for now. They’ll always be in competition with studios that sacrifice product quality for profitability. Many studios literally cannot afford to do things their way.
  - glouwbug 4y ago
    But the reputation of Elden Ring far outshines the reputation of Diablo. Activision Blizzard is dying for reason
    - jacooper 4y ago
iaaan 4y ago
I feel like we're well past due for some kind of price hike on AAA video games. Games were $60 when I was a kid, and inexplicably, they still are, for the most part. Unfortunately, since investors have figured out that the subscription model extracts the most profit possible, I have a feeling we're going to be seeing more and more of that rather than a simple price increase. Wouldn't surprise me if we even see Steam unveil something like Xbox Game Pass for their marketplace within the next few years. Maybe the worst part is the fact that you no longer actually own anything when all you're paying for is a subscription, but that's more or less how Steam already works, minus the recurring payments.
- wetpaws 4y ago
  People keep saying games should cost more, and yet games routinely gross orders of magnitude more than in the past due to sugnificantly expanded market.
- nightski 4y ago
  The market has been rapidly expanding for a long time, hence less need to increase prices. That plus if you include special, gold, ultimate editions, dlc packs, microtransactions, etc prices have been going up.
elromulous 4y ago
> 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". Fwiw, I would be onboard with some kind of model where one pays a small monthly (or additional fee) for continued updates. For instance, I play a few multiplayer games (overwatch, hunt showdown) and I'd be ok paying $1 a month or so to support continued updates / balancing etc. It seems like companies are missing the boat on the nominal recurring fees (vs say, the WoW level subscription of tens of dollars a month).
- bentcorner 4y ago
  I play Overwatch too and I'm kind of worried about what's going to happen when Overwatch 2 releases. OW 1's monetization policy is extremely generous, at this point in the game's lifecycle I have about 1000 hrs of playtime and have nearly every single cosmetic, and the only money I've sent Blizzard's way is the CD key and the pink charity skin. I worry that the pendulum will swing too far in the other direction and we'll see P2W elements, particularly in the PvE mode that eventually releases.
greymalik 4y ago
What limitations do you run into if you don’t pay that stop it from being fun after the first 30 levels?
Andrex 4y ago
> 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". It does work, but not at the profit multiples that venture capitalists and private equity currently demand. Speaking of gaming overall, not iOS specifically.
pwthornton 4y ago
It's a pretty great Diablo experience on an iPad with a controller. It is sad that you can't just pay a decent amount of money to get a classic experience. Maybe people will discover a path where you could pay a reasonable sum of money to get a fairly normal grinding experience with Diablo. I'm not opposed to in-app purchases, but I'm not a gambler, and I don't support gambling business models. I saw some reviews and write-ups saying that it would be more fun as a $10 game, but I think that's part of the problem. This is not a $10 game. It should be fully priced. For whatever reason, proper up-front never took hold on mobile. I know Apple really pushed 99-cent apps early on, and maybe that is part of the genesis of this. It has been even harder to convince Android users to pay for apps and games. And so here we are. I suspect it would be really hard to convince people to pay $60 for a mobile game after all these years of cheap and free games, no matter how good and how expensive it was to make. It's kind of illogical when you think about it. The latest iPhones are at least base PS4 in terms of power. The iPad Air And Pros are well beyond that. As others have noted, there are ways to make f2p work well. You can do season passes and cosmetic stuff. You don't have to go whale hunting. Realistically, we probably need legislation to make this kind of whale hunting illegal. We also need Apple and Google to step up and start caring about business models that support great software. It's not just games, we aren't getting great mobile software in general -- at least not at the rate we saw with desktop computers.
- makecheck 4y ago
  Proper up-front never occurred because Apple refuses to implement a simple free-trial-period mechanism. And it is impossible to filter store searches in a way that tells you which apps would behave roughly in that way (therefore anything with IAP I just assume must be a gambling/gem-bags/garbage model).
  - sjtindell 4y ago
    Really no video game lets you do a free trial. To me the start of all this was Google. Google completely changed the way we interact with services and technology. It’s amazing and completely “free”.
ksidudwbw 4y ago
VR is so fun if you want basic graphics and fun gameplay
- rashkov 4y ago
  Do you have some recommendations?
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Depends what you are into: Driving: Assetto corsa, iRacing, basically most racing simulators Flying: VTOL VR, DCS, MS Flight Sim 2020, Ultrawings Shooting: Onward, Pavlov, Contractors, Hot dogs horseshoes and handgrenades Social: VRChat, Rec Room Story/single player games: Half Life Alyx, Boneworks, Skyrim or Fallout 4 Stealth: Budget Cuts Others: Beat saber is a must I'd say VR is finally at the point where there are great games in most genres, and we are finally past the point where a stupid, 2 hour "experience" costs $40, in other words, most games being released for it now are not gimmicks. Honestly my recommendations are a little out of date. I've pointed out what I would consider "the classics" at this point
georgeecollins 4y ago
>> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. That model still works very well, probably as well as it ever has. But now there are also other models for your phone and computer. If people rejected them, only the "make good game, sell it" model would be left.
kirso 4y ago
It works, just that the incentive of a BigCo is to maximise shareholder value and thus revenue which results into hacking everything we can and exploit user behavior to squeeze the most out of the pockets of consumers. Basically the mechanism of incentives just works against us. We do really need a renaissance of authentic & sustainable products which are profitable and are there to delight, not to min/max our savings.
- robotnikman 4y ago
  When it comes to games, best bet is finding games from privately owned companies who don't have to answer to shareholders

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

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

It works. But nowaday, you cannot just be profitable. You gotta make your investers very happy.

grayfaced 4y ago
And no matter how well it does, investors will expect growth. So what further sliminess does Diablo Immortals 2 do to get growth? This behavior is unsustainable.

encrux 4y ago

It does work though. "Escape from Tarkov" and "It takes two" are just some of the more noteworthy ones. There's tons more on steam. It's just the mobile market that's screwed entirely. Which I find odd, because I'm convinced there are opportunities for games that work especially well on small screens with touchscreen (like Nintendo demonstrated half a decade before mainstream smartphones)

skohan 4y ago
Yes it does work. Elden Ring is another example of a hugely successful product which is solely focused on being an excellent piece of entertainment. It’s just more optimal for Profitability to create addictive garbage like this. Blizzard has chosen to be greedy and predatory rather than trying to create art of entertainment.
- ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  Whats Elden Ring got to do with it? You are comparing a full AAA game for PC and console made for hardcore gamers versus a mobile game with loot boxes designed to attract and exploit kids or people that addicted to this kinda crap and disguise it like a game, pretty much like slot machine do.
Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
Precisely, Nintendo tried a sane sales model with Super Mario Run back in 2016. You would have access to some levels, then pay and unlock the rest. No more in-app purchases, IIRC. The reaction was a lot of angry comments about the game being locked and that it should be free-to-play, etc. Their next games (like Mario Kart Tour) went back to the exploitative loot box model.
- cehrlich 4y ago
  Mario Run was also just not a very good game (this is obviously an opinion, but still…). I wonder how it would go if Nintendo tried releasing an actual good game for $10 or some other amount, not an infinite runner with a Mario skin.

matwood 4y ago

I've played to around level 30 or so also and it feels just like any other recent Diablo. So far it seems like I can pay to speed things up/improve the drop rate, or just keep playing without just fine. Is there some spot I'm going to hit that I can't progress without paying?

uberswe 4y ago
The article mentions that you can get the best gear for free but it will take you about 10 years. So I'm sure you can play it and have fun. If you try PVP however then you would be at a great advantage if you pay money for upgrades.
- skohan 4y ago
  But these games are explicitly designed to be frustrating and not fun when played for free. The math and game design are expertly crafted to make you play compulsively. They most certainly have been designed to cause psychological pain when you don’t play it you don’t pay. They are not designed to cause fun or joy.
  - toxik 4y ago
    The free aspect is like your heroin dealer going “the first dose is free”. That is exactly what they want you to do.
- matwood 4y ago
  The article is really quite confusing. Early on it says F2P can't get the best gear, then later says they can. Then they say even for paid players it's random so I'm not even sure how they come up with 100k figure. It's just hard for me to get upset about a game that's always been a pretty skin over a blatant Skinner box.
  - wincy 4y ago
    Yeah I mean the game is intentionally confusing. You have these things called eternal crests which cost 160 “gems” (the real money currency). These let you run a special dungeon that guarantees a drop of a legendary gem rated between 1 and 5 stars. In fact if you fail the dungeon somehow it’ll refund the crest and let you try again. Apparently the drop rate for the 5 star gems is 4.5%, so my napkin math works out to around $50 per 5 star legendary gem. I can’t go back and check my math because I uninstalled the game.

rapind 4y ago

> 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". I think the assumption that another model was even considered is what people are getting wrong. The game was made explicitly and intentionally for this p2w / gamble business model. There was never an attempt to make it anything else. Blizzard lent their IP to make a cash grab. They’re milking their IP while they can, and monitoring both back lash and revenue, and will be repeating it.

Beltalowda 4y ago

> 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". What makes you say that? I mostly play single-player games where I just buy a game and then play it. There are loads of those out there, with more released every week. Even with my underpowered Linux laptop I have plenty to choose from.

dmix 4y ago
Diablo 4 will probably just be a normal PC game too. Those freemium mobile games are always scammy but that doesn't mean there aren't endless classic business model games.
- jnovek 4y ago
  Perhaps. I still plays Diablo 2 and 3 quite a bit. I don’t think I’d call myself a “hardcore” player — I’m not very good — but I’m definitely in the Diablo 4 launch demographic. I’ve been keeping an eye on Diablo Immortal as sort of a canary. I can say with absolute confidence that I won’t be buying D4 at launch if Blizzard doesn’t fix the DI mess. Among longtime players of the franchise, I can’t imagine that I’m alone.
- adra 4y ago
  A publisher that has tasted fast cheap low value entries has a hard time justifying risky quality entries when the risk of failure is much higher. We're seeing the reality-tv moment in video games with mobile freemiums and it's frightening. I feel like Square-Enix is the perfect nexus if these market forces. I'm not even sure they'll bother with AAAs after making so much money off their low effort mobile cash cows.
  - account42 4y ago
    At least sqeenix just sold off a number of their studios and franchises so at least someone else can still make good games with them.
  - mysterydip 4y ago

wincy 4y ago

I spent $7 and just finished the main storyline. Then I joked to my friends “okay I’m level 60 I’m done now”. But then I thought about it and I uninstalled the game. I beat it, I get how the game works, I got an authentic Diablo experience. I’m done now.

hw 4y ago

Lots of folks disappointed at Diablo Immortal are comparing it to a PC game which it isn’t. It’s a great game that lets you play and experience Diablo on the go, during your lunch breaks, and on the porcelain throne. Once you adjust your expectations and understand that this is a filler game before D4 you’ll see that it’s a great game that can be enjoyed for the content without paying a cent

wincy 4y ago
I mean, you can literally play Diablo Immortal on Battle.Net on your PC right now. It’s even advertised for PC.

margaretdouglas 4y ago

The issue is fundamentally that releasing a single game for a single fee yields linear growth, which is to say the amount your growing by is stagnant. Stagnant growth, to an investor, is essentially a signal that your company is currently failing. So unless you can grow your growth, you fail, and the only way to continue growing your growth is if new products remain cash generating indefinitely.

deleted 4y ago
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hammock 4y ago
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Your insight connects the software industry to the larger macroeconomic environment of low interest rates and growth-seeking (rent-seeking?). A one-off’s sales have a ceiling, where a recurring revenue source is an indefinite fountain of sales. The same could be observed of Hollywood. How much of the derivative sequels, reboots and spin-offs are driven not by a lack of creativity as is often bemoaned, but rather by a greater-than-ever desire to develop “fountains of sales” rather than one-off artistic hits?

hw 4y ago

> 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". Same can be said for software. Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense.

csa 4y ago
> Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense. While some businesses abuse SaaS pricing (e.g., MS office for very basic uses, acrobat pro for basic uses, etc.), I think the SaaS pricing model has aligned the interests of developers and consumers (esp. smaller devs and smaller consumers) in a way that has allowed a wider market to have access to a wider range of affordable software and ongoing support/updates than would be possible under the previous system. There are definitely folks, often a small niche, who really just need an old version of a piece of software for one or two small functions, and maybe those folks should be built in to the SaaS pricing model somehow, but overall I think that the merits of SaaS pricing almost always outweigh the demerits by quite a bit.
- Larrikin 4y ago
  For nearly everything users should be able to pay once and then pay for updates. The model Jet Brains was forced into should be the norm and not the abusive model Apple has normalized and forced onto consumers
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I still don't understand how people sell small SAAS products with the per-country VAT rules.
  - cherioo 4y ago
    By using SAAS payment product that solves that for them! Which makes for a reasonable SAAS model given changing nature of tax system.

Timshel 4y ago

> 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". What I find really sad is that multiple games have proven that there is a middle ground and that making a f2p while making enormous amount of money is possible (League of Legend ...) and using such predatory system that are so prevalent on mobile is not the only solution. There is probably already enough monetisation around skins in the games that they would have easily turn up a profit. The rest is just greed and disregard for players but then when they don't care that the game is banned in two countries at launch because it violate gambling laws what else to expect ...

dmarchand90 4y ago
I believe there is a deep disease of extreme and growing wealth inequality, whose symptoms are erupting in every area of our way of life. This is a good example. In a more wealth equal society you're financial motivated to build good products for all users. Now the entire system is geared to the whims of the rich
- permo-w 4y ago
  the entire system is geared towards getting money from poor people it's easier to afford ~£5 in 99p microtransactions every month for a year than it is to afford a £60 triple A of course this isn't where the bulk of money comes from for these games (whales), but it's still a big factor
jstummbillig 4y ago
If you need to reference LoL/Fortnite to make a point, you are not making a point. In fact, there are very few games that have done the f2p walk successfully, sustainably, and all of them pale in comparison to the few extraordinary exceptions.
- qrazhan 4y ago
  There are a _ton_ of successful f2p games with reasonable monetization models - Valorant, CSGO, Warzone, Dota, Path of Exile, Lost Ark, Hearthstone, etc. It's just that games in general are a power law industry - I don't think monetization model is really what will prevent a game from being successful. In fact, much of the discourse around Immortal is that the gameplay itself is in fact top notch. Blizzard has the dedicated fanbase to make a healthy profit and more with a reasonable cash shop - they don't _need_ to resort to these extremely cash-grabby mechanics.

Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago

Indeed. I'm personally not a victim of loot boxes and exploitative P2W tactics because I just don't buy them. But I just want to pay some amount once and have a good game in my Android phone, without ads and without constantly nagging me to spend more! I'll pay $60 also if the game is good, I just don't want to be put into a Skinner box constantly trying to milk my "engagement" and my pockets. Is that so much to ask? Mind you, there are some games like that (my usual routine is to go to Google Play Games, navigate to the bottom, choose "no ads" and "no in-app purchases"), but it seems that they are like 1% of the total. If you like a specific niche subgenre, a franchise, etc. it's very likely that all games you find will be of the exploitative variety. It's sad that I have a pocket computer with an awesome screen in my hand the whole day, and other cool features like gyroscope, GPS, etc. that can be used for gaming; and I find myself going back to my good old PC (or lately, the Steam Deck) when I want to play.

rapind 4y ago
It sucks that the model of pay once ($60) or subscription doesn’t gel with the in-app purchase or advertising models. For example YouTube premium is a worse product than it could be because the entire platform has been designed with advertising and engagement in mind.
- MrDresden 4y ago
  YT Premium is not the product it could be because it only needs to be better than what it is replacing, or normal YT. Say this as someone who just subscribed this month.
wincy 4y ago
It’s even worse on mobile as the app might forcefully update you to a new Free to Play version. I spent $8 on Galaxy On Fire 2 HD which was acquired by another company then suddenly dropped the price and added ads and in app purchases. Very frustrating.
- eyeownyde 4y ago
  Similar experience for me. I bought the no ads version of plants vs zombies- “no ads” was even in the title. A few years later EA changed the app name and added ads.

peanut_worm 4y ago

Elden Ring was exactly "make good game, sell it" and it sold very well.

Hemospectrum 4y ago
The "no longer works" comment clearly refers to the business model, ie. ignoring the quality or popularity of the product itself and just looking at the balance sheet. The gambling (microtransaction) model is enormously more profitable than the classical "just sell a game" model. Elden Ring was spectacularly well received and has sold millions of units, but it's "only" a game. There's no casino in the back, and therefore no gambling-related revenue stream.
- interroboink 4y ago
  Maybe I misunderstand you, but if the "no longer works" comment refers to the business model as you say, then the person you replied to is saying "no, it can still work as a business model — here's an example." It may not work as well or as easily, but I don't think that's the point being made.
  - Hemospectrum 4y ago
    The customer might want to buy a product, and the studio might want to make it, but isn’t there someone they forgot to ask? Business models that are lower-risk and higher-return are systematically preferred by investors. Games are expensive to make. FromSoft has been successful enough to stay in business for now. They’ll always be in competition with studios that sacrifice product quality for profitability. Many studios literally cannot afford to do things their way.
- glouwbug 4y ago
  But the reputation of Elden Ring far outshines the reputation of Diablo. Activision Blizzard is dying for reason
  - jacooper 4y ago

iaaan 4y ago

I feel like we're well past due for some kind of price hike on AAA video games. Games were $60 when I was a kid, and inexplicably, they still are, for the most part. Unfortunately, since investors have figured out that the subscription model extracts the most profit possible, I have a feeling we're going to be seeing more and more of that rather than a simple price increase. Wouldn't surprise me if we even see Steam unveil something like Xbox Game Pass for their marketplace within the next few years. Maybe the worst part is the fact that you no longer actually own anything when all you're paying for is a subscription, but that's more or less how Steam already works, minus the recurring payments.

wetpaws 4y ago
People keep saying games should cost more, and yet games routinely gross orders of magnitude more than in the past due to sugnificantly expanded market.
nightski 4y ago
The market has been rapidly expanding for a long time, hence less need to increase prices. That plus if you include special, gold, ultimate editions, dlc packs, microtransactions, etc prices have been going up.

elromulous 4y ago

> 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". Fwiw, I would be onboard with some kind of model where one pays a small monthly (or additional fee) for continued updates. For instance, I play a few multiplayer games (overwatch, hunt showdown) and I'd be ok paying $1 a month or so to support continued updates / balancing etc. It seems like companies are missing the boat on the nominal recurring fees (vs say, the WoW level subscription of tens of dollars a month).

bentcorner 4y ago
I play Overwatch too and I'm kind of worried about what's going to happen when Overwatch 2 releases. OW 1's monetization policy is extremely generous, at this point in the game's lifecycle I have about 1000 hrs of playtime and have nearly every single cosmetic, and the only money I've sent Blizzard's way is the CD key and the pink charity skin. I worry that the pendulum will swing too far in the other direction and we'll see P2W elements, particularly in the PvE mode that eventually releases.

greymalik 4y ago

What limitations do you run into if you don’t pay that stop it from being fun after the first 30 levels?

Andrex 4y ago

> 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". It does work, but not at the profit multiples that venture capitalists and private equity currently demand. Speaking of gaming overall, not iOS specifically.

pwthornton 4y ago

It's a pretty great Diablo experience on an iPad with a controller. It is sad that you can't just pay a decent amount of money to get a classic experience. Maybe people will discover a path where you could pay a reasonable sum of money to get a fairly normal grinding experience with Diablo. I'm not opposed to in-app purchases, but I'm not a gambler, and I don't support gambling business models. I saw some reviews and write-ups saying that it would be more fun as a $10 game, but I think that's part of the problem. This is not a $10 game. It should be fully priced. For whatever reason, proper up-front never took hold on mobile. I know Apple really pushed 99-cent apps early on, and maybe that is part of the genesis of this. It has been even harder to convince Android users to pay for apps and games. And so here we are. I suspect it would be really hard to convince people to pay $60 for a mobile game after all these years of cheap and free games, no matter how good and how expensive it was to make. It's kind of illogical when you think about it. The latest iPhones are at least base PS4 in terms of power. The iPad Air And Pros are well beyond that. As others have noted, there are ways to make f2p work well. You can do season passes and cosmetic stuff. You don't have to go whale hunting. Realistically, we probably need legislation to make this kind of whale hunting illegal. We also need Apple and Google to step up and start caring about business models that support great software. It's not just games, we aren't getting great mobile software in general -- at least not at the rate we saw with desktop computers.

makecheck 4y ago
Proper up-front never occurred because Apple refuses to implement a simple free-trial-period mechanism. And it is impossible to filter store searches in a way that tells you which apps would behave roughly in that way (therefore anything with IAP I just assume must be a gambling/gem-bags/garbage model).
- sjtindell 4y ago
  Really no video game lets you do a free trial. To me the start of all this was Google. Google completely changed the way we interact with services and technology. It’s amazing and completely “free”.

ksidudwbw 4y ago

VR is so fun if you want basic graphics and fun gameplay

rashkov 4y ago
Do you have some recommendations?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Depends what you are into: Driving: Assetto corsa, iRacing, basically most racing simulators Flying: VTOL VR, DCS, MS Flight Sim 2020, Ultrawings Shooting: Onward, Pavlov, Contractors, Hot dogs horseshoes and handgrenades Social: VRChat, Rec Room Story/single player games: Half Life Alyx, Boneworks, Skyrim or Fallout 4 Stealth: Budget Cuts Others: Beat saber is a must I'd say VR is finally at the point where there are great games in most genres, and we are finally past the point where a stupid, 2 hour "experience" costs $40, in other words, most games being released for it now are not gimmicks. Honestly my recommendations are a little out of date. I've pointed out what I would consider "the classics" at this point

georgeecollins 4y ago

>> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. That model still works very well, probably as well as it ever has. But now there are also other models for your phone and computer. If people rejected them, only the "make good game, sell it" model would be left.

kirso 4y ago

It works, just that the incentive of a BigCo is to maximise shareholder value and thus revenue which results into hacking everything we can and exploit user behavior to squeeze the most out of the pockets of consumers. Basically the mechanism of incentives just works against us. We do really need a renaissance of authentic & sustainable products which are profitable and are there to delight, not to min/max our savings.

robotnikman 4y ago
When it comes to games, best bet is finding games from privately owned companies who don't have to answer to shareholders