Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.The reaction to the BlizzCon unveiling of “ Diablo Immortal” was “muted,” according to Activision Blizzard president and chief operating officer Coddy Johnson. Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls. Statements like these are only reinforcing that position and the company has a whole lot of work to earn back player trust, work they do not seem terribly interested in doing, by the sound of what Ybarra is saying here.įollow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. I don’t trust Blizzard anymore, and I know I’m not alone. And will probably not know until the game is literally launched, given that Immortal more or less hid its monetization until the last minute on purpose. While Diablo 4 has said it will not be monetized like Immortal, and would simply sell cosmetics and expansions, I don’t know what asterisks are attached to that.

Between Cheng and Ybarra playing games with semantics, and being willing to ignore 20 years of Diablo traditions and the series’ most devoted fans to snatch up new players with the potential to be P2W whales leaves an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. Game director Wyatt Cheng has not tweeted since about a month ago after his initial “we don’t sell gear” defense.Īll I can say is what this has done for me is that I simply cannot take Blizzard at their word these days, particularly when it comes to Diablo 4. Meanwhile, more generally, they seem to be ignoring all criticism outside of rare interviews like this.

The game has also made something like $50 million in revenue since launch from both average spenders and megawhales. Blizzard says that half of Immortal players have never played a Diablo game before, and they keep citing high app store reviews that indicate the problems cited about the game are not the “wider view” among players. Perhaps we’re shouting into the wind here.

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