Blizzard’s Mike Ybarra Finally Addresses Diablo Immortal Monetization Complaints
Since Diablo Immortal launched last month, the game has been heavily-criticized for its allegedly pay-to-win monetization scheme, especially when it comes to endgame content. To be fair, it’s the first Diablo game that’s free-to-play and microtransactions are to be expected but certainly not to the extent that you’d have to spend over $100,000 to fully-equip your character with max gear.
Up until now, Blizzard Entertainment has been silent about the issue but President Mike Ybarra has finally decided to address the elephant in the room, saying that microtransactions allowed them to offer the game for free to millions of players worldwide.
“When we think about monetization, at the very highest level it was, ‘how do we give a free Diablo experience to hundreds of millions of people, where they can literally do 99.5% of everything in the game?’” said Ybarra in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“The monetization comes in at the end game,” he added. “The philosophy was always to lead with great gameplay and make sure that hundreds of millions of people can go through the whole campaign without any costs. From that standpoint, I feel really good about it as an introduction to Diablo.”
Diablo Immortal launched on Android and iOS devices and open beta on PC on June 2nd. The game quickly drew negative reviews from the community because of its microtransaction-heavy gameplay. That being said, it still drew in quite a crowd with over 10 million downloads on mobile devices alone in the past month. It also generated over $49 million in sales during the same period despite complaints about its microtransactions.
Meanwhile, Season 2 is now live in the multi-platform ARPG with three new battle pass reward tracks, a new raid, and more. Check out the new battle pass rewards in the official Season 2 trailer below.
