Immortal Greed

For years Blizzard Entertainment has been my favorite game publisher. They gave us the games that I've wasted most hours of my life on: the Diablo games. Unfortunately I won't be playing the latest game in my all time favorite franchise because it's been ruined by pure greed...

I'm still playing Diablo 3, a game that has just celebrated its 10 year anniversary. I've been hacking and slashing monsters for over a decade in that one game. Including the first two Diablo games, I've been sending monsters back to hell since 1997. Back then I literally had a 20 meter coaxial network cable dangling out of my dining room window, leading to my next-door neighbor's dining room window, so we could slay monsters together using the burgeoning battle.net multiplayer service. Blizzard has become an integral part of my life during the past 25 years, almost half of my time on the planet, and I was looking forward to playing the latest game in my favorite virtual fantasy universe...

So my heart was broken when it became clear a few years ago that Diablo Immortal would become a mobile game first. This news wasn't received well by the Diablo community who, like myself, had been mashing a keyboard and mouse for a quarter century. Blizzard tried to calm us down, telling us how wonderful it would be to be able to play our favorite game whenever and wherever we want, but they eventually succumbed to the pressure and made a PC-port of the game as well. Wonderful. But not really; it has been developed as a "free to play" mobile game first, and Blizzard has gone all-in on the "pay to win" strategies and mechanics. It is the worst game ever when it comes to manipulating players into spending huge amounts of money on in-game items, they use every trick from the salesmen's Bible of psychological trickery...

Be sure to watch the below linked video as well for an extensive discussion about this orgy of pure greed, but just in general I'll say that not only games, but every aspect of human life is currently being broken, utterly destroyed by the endless quest for more profits; games and movies don't have to be good, as long as they make money (and there's no causal relationship between the two; endless sequals are the result of this philosophy). Journalists don't have to be honest or factual, as long as they make money, products need to have a short life-span, or else they don't make enough money, medicine and drugs we don't need are pushed, because they make money, we destroy the environment, cause a mass-extinction, because we don't care about anything but the money... "Money makes the world go 'round" they say, but "going 'round" is the only thing this world will do once we're finished with it.

Some Diablo fans have made some calculations, and I kid you not when I say that you'll either spend tens of thousands of dollars, or play a decade worth of daily quests and grinds to fully upgrade a single character. One of the Twitching and YouTubing players I've followed for years, Raxxanterax, recently released a video titled "Diablo Immortal Pay to Win Whale Destroys us in PvP." Raxxanterax is one of the best players in the world, and he's getting destroyed by some rich kid who spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on his or her character. In the video Raxxanterax seriously considers quitting the game as well.

And there it is. 5 star crests give the most bonuses and can be awakened so they can slot in the most extra legendary gems for ultra-endgame builds. It is quite literally impossible to accumulate any significant amount of useful, uncapped legendary gems playing for free, so it’s essentially like the final stages of the endgame don’t exist at all without paying. And paying a lot, with some calculations putting a “final” build in Diablo Immortal at $40,000-$100,000 of gem-hunting currency for max 5 star awakened everything.
_{source: Forbes}

It's such a shame. I feel sorry for the game developers because they have clearly produced a great game; every review I've seen or read says the same, that it plays wonderfully, that it's a true Diablo game, but that it's ruined by the predatory "pay to win" tactics. Not only that, Diablo Immortal beats the most egregious examples to date when it comes to luring money from the pockets of addicted gamers. You have the daily login-bonus, giving them a sense of generosity from the game, and training them to come back every day. You have weekly awards, further conditioning gamers into a rhythm, a cadence of return visits. You have the first few hours of easy progression, hooking them to the game, only to let them walk into a pay-wall of sharply rising difficulty with a choice between an endless grind or paying a few bucks. You have the loot boxes (cleverly disguised as "Elder Rifts" and "Crests" in this game) which upon opening greet players with satisfying sounds and a colorful display of on-screen magic, letting them know they did the right thing by spending their money. You have the in-game currencies (Gold, Platinum and Eternal Orbs), obscuring the real cost in real money, sold in quantities that always leave you needing a bit more or having a bit left, making you buy a bit more in both cases. It's bad. I won't be playing this "free" game. Watch the videos to learn how bad it is.

Some good news as well; in my country, The Netherlands, and in Belgium, the game has not been officially released due to recent laws regarding loot boxes. Let's hope this is the start of regulating this out of control industry that preys on children mostly. Really, they're like the heroin dealer that gives you a free shot or two in your weakest moment, only to demand a lot of money once you're addicted. Despicable. This has to stop.

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