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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35217 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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... context?

A couple years back, Blizzard teased that they'd be announcing a new diablo game at Blizzcon, something like a decade after the release of diablo III. Fans were extremely excited, slavering for a new entry in the series. So they get up on stage and announce a new diablo game... for phones. It's a mobile game. One of the fans comes up to the microphone and asks if this is actually an april fool's joke or something. The Devs start laughing sorta nervously, and one of them asks the audience "you guys have phones, right?", as though that's the problem people are having.

It did not go over well.

Has Diablo Immortal ended as profitable product?

They made an absolutely absurd amount of money off it, billions at least. I'd say they also "damaged their brand", but people are still buying diablo IV, and honestly Immortal probably will make more money in any case. If your question is "was this a bad decision, in a strictly monetary sense", almost certainly not.

"Billions" seemed implausible to me, but looking it up, I see numbers from 300M to 750M. Absolutely insane.

It's worse than that. The game ostensibly already existed, a Chinese mobile clone of their IP with all the bullshit already worked out. Existing engine, most of the skills are the same as the chinese clone. They jsut gave the chinese devs permission to completely use their IP instead. Then monetization loops glazed on top of that.

It's every bit as scummy as you can imagine.

As one would expect from a successful mobile game, the monetization model was very effective.

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