Well I’m no Blizzard fan so I’m afraid I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but the significance of this milestone is no short of wildly depressing so I couldn’t resist doubling back to discuss the news. In case you missed it, Blizzard released a mobile game named Diablo Immortal earlier this year. Reviews stated it had pretty decent gameplay and graphics, however the monetization practices were considered so scummy, so vile, that no one should even contemplate playing the game unless they were prepared to fork over cash. Too much cash. Reports indicated that the cost of maximizing a single character was around $110,000. Let that sink in. While I didn’t pay much attention at first, I distinctly remember checking out a “Immortal Gambling Simulator” which let you keep spinning with fake money to see how long it would take you to get high rarity items. To sum it up, I spun the wheel until I was tired of spinning and I don’t think I ever got good shit despite throwing away $5000 of fake money. 

With this horrible reputation in mind, I assume you’re thinking “aha, Snooze is here to spread the wondrous news of how it failed!” I’m afraid not. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It has since been established that the game earned over $100 million dollars for Blizzard in a mere eight weeks. How? You know, I don’t fucking know. Like many, my first instinct was to consider the Asian market. It’s not a secret that gachas are more tolerated in those nations and that the Chinese market is especially prone to forking over cash for mobile games. However, I discovered while digging that apparently the Chinese version of the app was delayed until July 25th, so it barely added to the pool of money generated from the initial release on June 2nd.  This one is mostly the fault of Westerners as far as I can tell. Fellas. We gotta have a talk. What the hell kind of precedent are we setting here?

But it's all worth it to kill skeletons slightly faster.

There’s absolutely a time and place for microtransactions. Hell I’m a damn Genshin Impact player, so I can’t say too much without calling the kettle black. Still, at the end of the day Genshin Impact is a mostly free 200+ hour game where it’s YOUR choice if you want to roll on bonus characters and weapons to add to your party. It’s completely optional and you can play the game fine without spending money. Same with shit like Fortnite. Hell you can spend a ton of money real fast if you want to make Itachi from Naruto do a dumb dance, but that’s useless as far as the true gameplay experience. The monetization is certainly present, yet it doesn’t interfere with the core gameplay and you don’t feel restricted for choosing to keep your wallet closed. $110,000 for a single character to be grinded out? What are we doing? Genshin Impact requires around $2000 to max out a five star character if you’re unlucky, and I assume somewhat close to that price for a maxed weapon, but again neither of those feel needed and hell at the end of the day I guess $4,000 is a lot less than $110,000.

Don't go getting any crazy ideas, miHoYo.

At this point, I’m scared of what this means. Diablo Immortal took the Eastern gacha system, cranked up the consumer abuse to the max, applied it to the Western audience, and instead of failing miserably it became a game that is now in the same discussion as Pokemon Go. I’m disappointed to say the least. All the review bombs and negative press amounted to nothing. So now what? Will more games follow in Immortal’s footsteps and employ anti-consumer practices? Will anime games clap back by making their gachas worse? Are we headed for the worst time in gaming history, or was this a minor setback? Open your wallet, blindly throw your favorite corporation everything inside of it, and enjoy your Sword of Shadows (+3) that does 3% more damage in the comments below!