Diablo Immortal’s microtransactions aren’t an anomaly — they’re expected

Where? Diablo Immortal was announced at BlizzCon 2018, a lone member of the audience stood before the developers of the free-to-play mobile title to ask: “Is this an out-of-season April Fools’ joke?” This general vitriol and mockery followed Diablo ImmortalUp until the launch of its latest version. And these sentiments haven’t diminished since. But it’s no longer the knee-jerk reaction to disappointing announcements, or the fact that the game is available on mobile devices. It’s the result of Diablo Immortal’s microtransactions, which, while predatory, weren’t spun up out of thin air.

Diablo Immortal is doused in layers of in-game transactions — a proverbial wall of offers with inflated percentages to convince players that the more they buy, the more they save. This practice has been in place for years on the mobile market, regardless of how different it may seem. It’s easy to see. Genshin Impact’s Genesis Crystal store, where purchasing large amounts of currency will grant players an even larger amount of the same exact currency. You also see it in the case of Lapis — the paid currency in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius — which titillates players with “bonus” currency reaching into the thousands when purchasing packs valuing upward of $100.

“A common tactic for mobile games or any game with microtransactions is to complicate currency,” an anonymous employee working within the mobile game industry recently told me. “Like, if I spent $1, I might get two types of currencies (gold and jewels, for instance). It helps to obfuscate the actual cash value spent since there isn’t a one-to-one conversion. We also intentionally offer worse deals [beside] other ones to make the other deals look more lucrative and players feel like they are smarter by saving out and getting the other deals.”

“In the company I was in, we had weekly events with unique prizes, and they were designed so that you could […]Completing it with in-game currency would allow you to win one of the main prizes. Designers had to consider adding additional prizes beyond the main prize. These would normally require real cash spending to make it happen. One of the most important metrics and milestones we use to determine if an event is successful was how many people spent. We did measure sentiment, but I think the higher-ups always cared more about if the event got folks to spend.”

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Real-money transactions aren’t new by any stretch of the imagination. Diablo Immortal didn’t pioneer them, and it would be disingenuous to present that as fact. Blizzard’s action-RPG isn’t the root cause, but instead the worst amalgamation of hundreds of different free-to-play mobile and PC games. Two Battle Passes are available, with each having their own rewards and not being shared among your entire roster. There’s also too many currencies that it is difficult for average players to keep track. Diablo Immortal’s economy reads like a mobile marketplace monstrosity.

These tactics, although sometimes met with resistance from some, are now commonplace in the entire industry. You could argue that the prevalence of loot boxes or other real-money transactions in AAA games has contributed to this kind of predatory economy — but the more that AAA gaming shifts toward the games-as-service model, the more it has in common with mobile games that have existed within this extremely popular sphere for almost a decade.

And this isn’t just reflected in the use of paid currency to obtain items, but also in gacha mechanics, and the disclosure of drop rates among rarer items. In-game currency can be used to purchase items or free of charge. Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera OmniaCharacters or names in the popular and persistent Fate/Grand OrderOr Genshin Impact.

Diablo Immortal’s case, it’s the use of Legendary Crests (which can be earned or purchased) to increase the chance of a 5-star gem appearing in endgame dungeons. While not entirely traditional in its presentation (most gacha are performed through “rolling” on a limited-time banner), players are still engaging with the kind of randomness in a similar manner. These mechanics are what the Diablo franchise is building towards since inception. Maddy Myers wrote this a few weeks back.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment via Polygon

Diablo Immortal also, in no uncertain terms, pulls direct inspiration from a “feeding” mechanic that many Japanese, Korean, and Chinese mobile games have normalized for over a decade. “Feeding” entails raising the stats, attributes, or rarity of an item by getting a duplicate of a drop. To increase stats, duplicates can be fed to another item with the same rarity. To max out an item, or character in the market, you will need five duplicates.

My first introduction to “feeding” was in Fate/Grand OrderIt was released originally in Japan in July 2015. The movie grossed $4Billion worldwide. To make the character I wanted to create, I had to have duplicates. When a banner came up, I spent upwards of 300 euro to get the 5-star character that I had long longed for. However, I never obtained the duplicates I needed in order to see this character’s full potential. The rates of 5-star stars with the highest value being at around 1% it’s no wonder that I did not manage to acquire a copy during my playthrough. I also have the original installed but I do not remember how. The current July 2021 date. Fate/Grand Order was the seventh highest grossing mobile game of all time, sitting just behind Konami’s Puzzle & DragonsIt is also known as a gacha,

Hoyoverse, a Genshin Impact designer (previously Mihoyo), openly admitted during a GDC 2021 presentation that Genshin Impact’s method of designing characters was based on generating capital as much as possible from the audience. Only March 2022 saw the Raiden Shogun, Kokomi and Kokomi character reruns that brought in over $33 million.

Hoyoverse by Polygon

Diablo ImmortalWhile you may wear a mask that is different from the one underneath, the facial features are the same. Activision Blizzard made this worse, Oli Welsh said. Its recent release. This has resulted in well-earned scrutiny from an international player base; the same can’t always be said for the games that set the precedence for these practices. While games with similar mechanics and egregious rates have been under scrutiny within their own respective communities, this is the first time we’ve seen pushback of this magnitude.

However, this may be partly why the industry continues its stagnation. These illegal practices go unchecked because the number of mobile users has increased significantly over the past decade. However, governments have also played their parts in expecting the games industry to “self-regulate,” as opposed to imposing some kind of international (or in-country) restraints on these predatory practices. Japan is the rare exception — it began imposing regulatory standards for gacha games and other “loot box”-based titles as early as 2012. However, Japanese developers are able to negotiate loopholes to modify their practices and disclose drop rates (which includes disclosing the availability of any item through gacha mechanics), to avoid some of the laws.

For those who have been playing mobile games more than 10 years, this progression feels natural. This market is so popular and lucrative. Diablo ImmortalIt feels like an extremely sinister approach to some of the worst practices in the industry. Blizzard’s newest release earned over $24 million in revenue in just two weeks — not just through the dense layering of shop transactions that bleed into the very mechanics of the game, but also through sheer exposure on Twitch, with some streamers spending copious amounts of money to get the coveted 5-star gem. This beast may very well become the standard in the near future. Although it is cruel, it feels funny. Diablo ImmortalThis isn’t the first or last of its kind.