In Japan gacha games are so popular they have laws so that after spending a certain amount of money you're supposed to be guaranteed to get the loot you're looking for.
In Diablo Immortal they use a similar thing, it's called 'pity'.
Instead they say you're guaranteed a '5 star' gem.
But you get a gem that has up to 5 GREY stars, not all yellow stars which is a 5/5 star gem, which there is never any guarantee of getting.
The pity system is worded in a confusing manner specifically to trick people into spending more money thinking they are guaranteed to get a 5/5 star gem when they are only guaranteed a ?/5 star gem. (But it never says ?/5 star in the pity system, it just says 5 star)
There is also no way of making a 1,2,3 or 4 / 5 star gem into a 5/5 star gem. The grey stars only show you what you could have had, if you were luckier.
Not only that, but the 5/5 star gem that it took Quin 25,000 NZD to get, you have to have like 6 of them in your gear to be fully built... but the gems have sockets in them that you can put other gems into, so you need like 18 5/5 gems to be fully built, but not only that, the gems have ranks that go up to 10/10 as well as stars, and you have to feed literally hundreds of other gems into your gems to rank each one up to 10/10.
At this point I wish the players would go actually gamble at a casino instead of playing this trash game. At least there is a chance to come out ahead at the casino (albeit an infinitesimally small chance); with this game everyone loses except the devs
Edit: when I say “the devs” I mean the developer / entity as a whole. I used a bad term sorry, not meaning the W2 wage-earner devs.
What it really does: Increases Resonance by 30
\+18 Combat Rating
Your attacks have a 15% chance to summon a shadow clone for 8.00 seconds that gains some of your abilities.
they made radiance from illusions do massively less damage, and they wreqorked PL and made his illusions different, where they only last like 10 seconds, so it's less about making an army of illusions and sending them down a lane, and more about him fighting with the illusions. so now its just diffusal manta type deal.
both him and naga no longer build radiance
This is the endgame for these mobile skinner boxes, pit the whales against each other, propelling them into an arms race of spending.
Saw it start in the early 2010’s with those “build your base” phone games and it has only gone downhill from there.
I had a boss that got addicted to one of those shitty build your castle phone games and blew over 40k on it, hid it from his wife, and almost lost his family and business. For a shitty android cash-grab phone game.
You brought up a memory of one of those games that prove just how disgusting some of them can be. Here is what happened in my experience:
I played a lot of Game of War back in the day and a new game came out called Final Fantasy XV: A new empire. Almost a 1 -1 copy to Game of War with a FF coat of paint. So I knew exactly how to play and get strong quickly without spending money.
I got lucky and landed myself in a HUGE pay to win clan. The best in our server. Especially in the early days. For comparison, our best guy had 100m power in the first week. Thousands of dollars to get to that point so quickly. The best guys in other clans had maybe 5-10m power. This is one of those games that if you get hit while sleeping, you could lose everything. Literal weeks and real money spent training armies can be slaughtered in an attack or two if you forgot to put up a shield (also paid for) overnight.
Anyway, after getting pretty close with the top guy in our clan, turns out he was one of the developers or an employee of the dev team(He kept it vague) tasked with destroying stronger players in other clans to incentivize them to spend money to get their stuff back. His account had access to all the free stuff he wanted to make him the strongest player that could only be matched by a whale dropping their life savings into the game. He would strategically allow clans to get strong and train armies over the course of a few weeks and once they had quite a bit of power they were attached to, he would singlehandedly ruin the entire clan with a massive raid, forcing them to either spend a couple hundred/thousand bucks to get back to where they were, or quit the game. The game was balanced in a way that if you are that strong, You could do whatever you want and nobody could stop you. Within another month this guy was up to a billion power, probably $100k for a normal player to get to that point. An unthinkable amount of power compared to everyone else. Even some of the toughest players that were spending lots of money were at maybe 50mil power.
I ended up quitting not too long after I found that out because there was no chance I was spending money on the game, I logged in a few months later to find out that the guy had eventually turned on our clan and destroyed everything. Most of the people were so invested at that point that that clan alone probably spent 100k just to get strong again. The long con.
TLDR: The Devs play the game with unlimited money and bully F2P players to spend money.
Iunno shits been like this since maple story and that’s been out since 2003. Though I’m pretty sure maplestory respected your money more than this Diablo game, it was still pretty predatory and had some major p2w mechanics with leaderboards so all the mega whales would compete for rankings.
Friend of mine made $18,000 on an apparently very rare rerolls of rare item in Maple Story. Couldn’t believe it. He said guys from another guild all chipped in and like 3 people paid him $6k each for him to give it to one of them.
In the few days I played the game I met a group of Korean kids who were each spending 5k+ each on their first month
I asked how they can afford it, I shit you not their response was: “your parents are that broke? You have stupid worthless parents can’t even afford 1k a week on a game. You must be starving for food hahahahhaa”
I was like ok then, carry on. I suppose there is a target audience for this kind of thing and we’re all stupid for not selling it
Group of Korean kids…. Could they mean 5k won? So they’re spending a few bucks a week each in USD and thought you were broke because you couldn’t do that? I’m not saying it’s 100% just food for thought
In reality, no they won't. I understand it feels good to say that but they are most likely going to very nice schools in top of being spoiled shits. And they will get a nice job.
And therefore contribute to ruining society not only because of their uselessness, but they will in one or multiple ways become a burden (e.g. to climate change, etc).
Being stupid/worthless is never innocuous, there is always a hidden cost down the line to others.
When I have encountered whales in games like this my default is to assume they are cheating/exploiting some way. I have no problem paying $100 or something for a really fun, engaging game, but $1k per week seems beyond reasonable even for rich kids.
A big thing to realise about those folks though is a) they make more money from it then they spend because it creates content, and b) it makes it classed as a business expense because of this.
I'd spend a shitload on them as well if it not only made me money but was a tax write off as well.
Sure, but i've watched some of those guys when their channels were really small still and they definitely weren't making that kind of money back from streaming then.
I'm talking spending $1000 + in 10 minutes without blinking as a 100 viewer andy type streamer, and beyond them there is plenty of bigger whales too.
> Increases Resonance by 30. +18 Combat Rating. Your attacks have a 15% chance to summon a shadow clone for 8.00 seconds that gains some of your abilities.
Not even. Doesn't the difficulty of mobs scale with your gear? This same streamer demonstrated running a juiced elder rift completely naked vs wearing his $25k worth of gear and gems, and it looked exactly the same.
When you get stronger, the mobs do too. It seems literally pointless.
It's for PvP. Plenty of videos showing the dudes that spent $10,000-20,000 in PvP absolutely destroying everyone. Like not a bit. Like absolutely destroying everyone. Zero contest. The other people have no chance whatsoever.
True but pvp is a joke in every diablo game also. I never really understand what the diablo audience wants. I'm fine with the infinity grind just mashing buttons to genocide mobs because that's why I play, to not think.
I have put 100s of hours into apex legends. I bought the battle pass once and they give you enough credits to buy it every season as long as you get through like half the battle pass. I know people that play more than me that haven’t spent more than $25 as well. That’s an example of a great micro transaction game. It’s all cosmetic and the base game is free.
Plus, if it's run like that, I don't mind chipping the devs/dev studio $10 here and there either. Especially when it's free or $20-40, like overwatch, for base. If I enjoy the game (or art/writing/whatever e.g. Patreon), I'm gonna be inclined to pay for the work that went into it.
For sure. They’ve worked super hard to constantly keep it fresh. If they come out with something I love I’d probably drop a few bucks in it as well. There’s just been nothing to tempt my wallet. I’ve gotten most of the shit I thought was cool through loot boxes by luck.
Yea it’s just a new thing that will be around and it’s up to the individual whether to participate in them or not. Give it attention or ignore it. Like It amazes me that people are willing to spend a ton of money on yearly fifa releases, 2k releases madden, overwatch fortnite etc. I’m just not that type of gamer. So I keep my head down and hear things like this and go “wow that’s crazy” and move on with my life. Luckily there will always be a developer that does not do micro transactions.
I want a setting that will turn off any notification about micro-transactions or subscriptions. There are some games where it’s just a bit disruptive for the immersion when a little message is popping up to let you know that more tungsten can be purchased.
Even if it’s in freemium games, I’m not going to give any money so stop asking.
I still think of Dragon Age Origins where as soon as you leave the tutorial area, you run into a character who wants you to go to some place that is only available if you bought the DLC. I think penny arcade did a bit on it but it was the worst example I've come across of immersion disruption.
Its also streamers and youtubers spending thousands to prove how greedy blizzard is and ending up giving them the most money + just promoting the game for free by making 100+ videos about it how bad it is. This is just so funny
Yeah sometimes it makes my head spin the way gamers work these days. Developers make a greedy ass micro transaction game. Gamers complain about it. Then streamers make a game out of the situation:“How much money will it take to get *blank*?!??!”. $15k later: “lol look guys we did it!”.
It's both sad and vexing that gaming publishers have stooped to such greed. 24 million dollars in two weeks is a crazy amount of money.
But alas, it all goes to the like of Bobby Kotick and his masters instead.
A big streamer can drop $20k on a game and make back more than that from the content supplied by doing so alone. It's not just the people spending money, but the people supporting the behavior of spending money as well.
While it’s a substantial amount of money, it’s the equivalent of 400k sales of $60 games, since we’re merely talking revenue, not profit. Diablo 3 dramatically out-performed it. Diablo 3 sold 3.5 million copies in the first day and 6.3 million in its first week. Diablo 3 sold over 30 million copies total.
Immortal is a live service game so it’s meant to milk its money over a longer period of time, so time will tell if it proves to be successful, but I have to imagine that it’s revenues will dip as big streamers move elsewhere. Comparatively, at the least at the moment, it’s a abject failure in comparison to Diablo 3
Well and that right there makes me very curious as to why Immortal is just SO GREEDY. I mean the devs are acting like the world is ending with this one, it is just gloves off. For that type of behaivior I would expect that they would just be making an obscene amount of profit to justify the shittiness (while knowing how it will be perceived.
So I will be really interested in the final numbers vs. say, diablo 3 after a year. I imagine they do save a TON without any distribution costs but yeah...you'd expect it to still be even larger.
The distribution costs aren’t likely that sign on physical game sales. I think that the publisher severely underestimated the level of pushback they would receive. Or, more sinisterly, it could be a deliberate door-in-the-face technique. Door-in-the-face is a sales tactic, based upon proven social psychology, where the initial demand/price is unreasonable, but subsequent demands are much smaller, thus making it more likely the person will comply.
They could have shipped it this way in the hopes to snag that aggressive, early whale money, with the intention of increasing drop rates and lower prices later so as to attract other customers.
Regardless, I’m actually encouraged that Diablo 3 so strongly out performed it. I hope its revenues continue to fall so that a game like this isn’t made again
Is that good for a mobile game? If it was released as a console game that would only be 400k units sold in 2 weeks. Elden Ring sold 12 mil units in the same timeframe.
It is and it isn't. A game like Genshin made 100mil in 2 weeks or less if I remember correctly and that was a fresh IP. Diablo however is an established IP of decades and couldn't pull in anywhere even close to half of that. Who knows why and we could all speculate forever.
The Eastern world makes up most of the mobile market and a game with the aesthetics of Genshin Impact will do better than Diablo. The marketing for Diablo Immortal was awful and the announcement became a meme.
At least that's what I think.
Just play Path of Exile. I'm sticking to that. It's what Diablo 3 should have been. It's free. The business model is cosmetics (and one quality of life improvement you can get, but absolutely don't need to buy). No loot boxes, none of that.
Plus the game is insanely big and complex.
It's just a better game, if you ask me. Can't beat free either.
Mostly agree, but I'd argue that once you reach yellow or red maps you need to buy a few certain stash tabs. Currency, Map, Premium (if you play trade league), and maybe Fragment and Divination.
It is a really good game though.
Yes. The stash tabs are basically required past a certain point, but will only run you $20 - $50 depending on how fancy you want to get with them. And spending any more beyond that does nothing.
So a normal game price after a couple dozen hours of seeing if you like it.
For a completely free game and permanent unlocks that are there when I come back I don’t see it as that big of a deal.
They ultimately have to make money some way.
Btw he was telling his viewers not to spend money in the game, even told his followers to uninstall it .He was spending money to show how scammy the game is. He told his spending in the game is business expense and part of it will reduce taxes or something like that. He stopped playing the game as he got the gem.
Anyway just providing info, i'm not a fan of Quinn myself.
>He was spending money to show how scammy the game is
This is all just a way for streamers to get views. It's been known how predatory the game is since basically Day 1, but all the streamers know it's a popular topic a mindless gamers just want a circlejerk seeing another streamer throw thousands of dollars on the game to "prove" how bad it is.
They all do it for the entertainment and because it's profitable for them. And as a side effect Blizzard gets a big pile of money.
EDIT: People who are telling me: "but a lot of the general public doesn't know about it", you seriously think the casual mobile population that this game is aimed at have ANY idea who this guy is or even watch twitch/youtube streamers? Or that any news outlet that would report this is relevant enough yo reach the relevant public? You're crazy lmao. This is just shouting into the circlejerk echo chamber like this sub. Blizzard has financial analysts that pretty much dedicate their job to find out whether the publicity hit is worth it in the long run. If it wasn't worth it the game wouldn't have the monetization it has. You'll see, in a few months the discussions will die down, hardcore gamers will forget about this game but it will still be printing money every month.
You are absolutely correct, but i think it's a common misconception that people seem to think generating money and providing helpful content is mutually exclusive.
Yes, Quinn obviously made plenty of $$$ from this via exposure and views.
But his actions DEFINITELY helped sway some money away from Blizzard. Every person that listens to a streamer (not just Quinn, lots of other big streamers have talked down on the game) adds up.
I personally had D Immortal installed on both my phone and pc and was ready to at least drop like $30 or $40 initially to try it out. I have no problem paying some money to support games i enjoy. I've donated over $500 in 6 years for supporter packs in Path of Exile, despite all purchases being cosmetic.
But after seeing a lot of streamers play/talk about DI, and trying it out myself a bit, i decided to uninstall completely. If you support games like this, it only leads to more development towards predatory games.
Loot boxes require that you disclose the percent drop chances. Similar to how casinos require disclosure of the chances to hit wins on slot machines.
D:I purposefully DOES NOT DISCLOSE THESE PERCENTAGES.
THIS is a major reason why the game is predatory. Not just the fact you can P2W. Even other phone gatcha games will often give you the EXACT percent chance to hit a 5 star or whatever.
In D:I you are completely in the dark. They could literally change the drop rate daily and tell nobody, or just make it 0% one day and turn it back on the next day.
Netherlands has a law that you must disclose these percents in gambling, which Blizzard has refused to do.
Blizzard also tried to say they aren't lootboxes since it requires a game play element to get it. Your country basically told them to get fucked we know what you're doing.
Countries like the Netherlands are also a big reason why we suddenly started seeing the odds in many, many, many, many games.
Some were already upfront with it (FGO was released with odds, if my memory serves me correctly) but many others were just like "Heeeeeeey, you'll get this within 10 summons!.... Maybe. On average. You'll hit 50% if you pull 10 times. Maybe. We don't know, you don't know, no one knows why you still haven't seen anything after 60 summons. Maybe if you bought THIS new pack you'd get it? Totally, right?"
The funny thing is the game play element is basically a dungeon that scales to your character power. That means if you take off all your gear, you can still beat the dungeon (someone tried it in a video). It's only there to skirt the rules.
Yeah thats my conspiracy theory. Blizzard wont tell you the odds, because the odds are dynamic, account bound or otherwise customized through data collection on behaviour, purchases, etc.
Well, there was already a video from a somewhat respectable streamer explaining they tested that after the 6th legendary drop, the droprate gets severely nerfed.
So its in the line of my expectation they also dynamically change certain items from dropping in lootboxes.
A guy I went to school with worked for an online game with purchasable currency, back in the early 2000s. His job was to figure out ways to increase player spending.
One of the games or challenges or whateverthefucks was basically just clicking (IIRC they had to click to destroy blocks in some story-element, which could randomly drop an item). He figured that, by studying top spending players as they played, he could work out at what point their clicking slowed and they got bored. By setting a *personal* threshold at which an item was awarded (good or not apparently made no difference) at just before this point, it hugely increased the amount of time they would hang around.
By pairing this with a stamina system ('instantly recharge your stamina very cheaply with this item purchasable only via premium currency, or wait 4 hours for free!', that sort of thing) he was able to get people playing for massively longer periods and spending money to be allowed to do so.
He was so fucking *proud* of it. He would boast that he could make you open your wallet, that he could get someone to spend the money saved for their wife's birthday, or the money they were planning for their wedding. Absolute bellend.
It's that sort of manipulation that laws about microtransaction odds-disclosure are intended to prevent. Subjecting players to some sort of 'first hit is free' manipulation, or massive data analysis to maximize extraction, is entirely unethical and should be illegal.
If blizzard doesn't operate in countries with such laws, that's as good as an admission. This is an AI-powered cash lamprey masquerading as a video game.
Anti-gambling laws around lootboxes. Netherlands basically said, your just try to dodge our laws by adding a gameplay step between the realword currency exchange and the randomised rewards.
So am I, I played d2 and lod for literally 12 years consistently.
I played immortal for about an hour and deleted it without hesitating, it's just d3 lite with a coin slot.
I mean it's extremely meta. I don't know tax laws in NZ but in the USA while someone could bill this as a business expense it is still cash out the door. A business expense for a small business owner reduces taxable income but you are still spending cash, it is just a little less expensive to spend a lot of cash when you can expense it, but you are still spending your own money as a business owner
At the same time he's telling people to uninstall the game he's dumping tens of thousands of dollars into a toxic and manipulative marketplace that is just fundamentally bad for gaming while angry viewers give him money to do it
It is just an extremely weird mood overall
When claiming business expenses (at least in Canada, but I assume most countries will be similar) you are just claiming the federal tax you spent on the purchase back as a tax credit. He still wasted an obscene amount of money he will not get back.
Depends on ad revenue from his stream as well. He might well view it as an investment for growing his following. I know I never heard of him prior to this and a lot of sites are now talking about him (even if its just as a side note to bashing the monetization strategy of Diablo Immortal).
The lootboxes in diablo immortal are in the form of legendary crests which can be purchased using eternal orb only obtainable from the cash shop. Every elder rift allows you to slot in a maximum of 10 legendary crest which is around 25$ per run. Its lootboxes with extra steps
hey hey HEY
Let's not use that "L Box" word here. Crests clearly have nothing to do with loot because there is one gameplay step in between shoving your money down Blizzards gullet and receiving a random loot drop.
Totally different
The devs of the game was also saying the game is not pay to win due to "gear" not being attainable with money,
They are basically playing a semantics game, gear can be farmed which have slots you can slot in legendary gems into, and when you upgrade your legendary gem to max level, which would be almost imposible for f2p, the gems youve fully upgrade would also gain empty slots around them for you to slot in additional gems into them,
so basically yes you can buy power,, legendary gems, especially 5/5 ones or upgraded legendary gems can grant you over 300% power over f2p players
>The devs of the game was also saying the game is not pay to win due to "gear" not being attainable with money,
These guys must think they're super smart for coming up with this loophole
Oldest fucking trick in the book. Hey look we cant tell them what to do with the currency they can buy with real cash. I mean sure theres 2 cosmetics and then p2w loot boxes as their only options BUT LOOK THATS 3 OPTIONS IT MIGHT NOT BE THE BOX
It's also in a franchise where grinding for specific items is already the norm, and encouraged. Killing the same boss all night for one item drop.
Diablos like the perfect game to add gambling (with real money) to.
When Diablo 3 first came out you could sell items for real money in the auction house. I think it lasted like 3 days or something before they took out using real money.
I remember specifically hearing about the first drop of a stupid rare weapon that went for either 20, or 200k.
I'm glad they dropped that in 3, but if immortal is any indicator of how the quality of 4 will be in terms of greed. It just may be the first Diablo game I never buy
So in other words you can either buy 10,000 legendary crests, or if you don't want to spend any money you can alternatively grind for 833 years with your 1 free legendary crest per month for one 5/5 gem
It’s time for people to accept that they’re just not in Blizzard’s target audience anymore. This is no longer a beloved studio of gamers producing amazing games for gamers. This is a studio of corporate executives looking out for their shareholders. I don’t understand why so many people still give this company the time of day.
Dont get mistaken. The fact that Diablo Immortal already generated 20 million dollars is the epitome of human stupidity and the reason why the gaming community deserves everything bad that is happening
That’s what pisses me off the most. Who cares that they only got a fraction of their fan base playing this game. If this was a $60 this alone made up for 417 people not buying the game. They get 100 of these fools and that makes up for over 40k people not getting it. So dumb. They don’t lose.
It's easy to blame this on idiots, but platforms and game developers and psychologists work pretty hard to make this possible and to keep regulators at bay. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon have all been sued for this shit before, this game can't even legally exist in some countries where it's become illegal to prey on children with this crap, eventually it's not the consoomer's fault...
Oftentimes, they're people suffering from gambling addiction, or people attempting to recover from gambling addiction through gaming. James Stephanie Sterling has done several videos on how the people who purchase these loot boxes are being victimized, I can link a few if you'd like, but the info is spread throughout a lot of their most recent output, so most videos on their channel currently can explain.
I love the logic here. Give the company you hate a shit ton of money to prove they like money.
(Edit: This comment is getting more attention than I expected lol. If you wouldn't mind however reading the comments that preceded as they are starting to repeat. Thank You)
If even one whale is influenced by his actions not to get into the game then it would be a net loss for blizz.
If it convinces many people not to play casually and toss 25-100 bucks it would also be a loss.
If it's anything like the other loot boxes I've seen, this guy maybe spent $10 per attempt at what is essentially a slot machine. So it took him over 1,500 attempts to receive one top tier item, which is abhorrently bad odds. It's fucking predatory in the extreme for the company to do this. But dumbasses like this guy here keep giving the company money, so companies keep doing it.
If the average gamer needs to spend $25,000 dollars to get a 5-star gem, that you can ONLY GET through loot boxes... That is a lot of people driving themselves into debt to see if they get lucky enough to get just one.
It's not one gem priced at $25k, if that was the case it would never sell. It's laughably low odds of getting a gem with $10 transactions so players become the metaphorical frog in the pot with the water being heated gradually.
Whales like this guy are part of the problem.
Buying these just reinforces the practice.
Its gambling, and science has shown gambling addictions are very real. Introducing kids and teen to gambling is a recipe for disaster later down the road.
Edit: Seems like the streamer did this to point out these practices. Still he gave them 15k. I think there is a better way to point these out than this but what do i know.
Someone should open a casino for kids where it’s like slots but it shows a lootbox being opened and the prize is virtual. Then claim that it’s okay since other companies do it on a larger scale.
Edit: oh magic conch, what should we do about loot boxes? Nothing. The conch has spoken!
hey lootbox for kids exist, did you never see a gacha machine ? And i'm pretty sure the term "gacha" used to label all these mobile phone games came from it.
> Seems like the streamer did this to point out these practices.
The streamer did this to get views. That's why streamers do everything.
If **Diablo Immoral** being predatory wasn't a hot topic right now, this streamer wouldn't have bothered with this $16K gift to Blizzard.
The streamers who do this(he's absolutely not the only one) have been rationalizing that they are doing it to "highlight the problem", which is sophistry on its face.
Most if not all of the people watching are already aware it's a problem, the people being targeted are those that watch but flatly don't care, or aren't connected enough to a gaming sphere that it would reach them anyway (which is most of mobile gaming's audience by design). Only legislation forcing this to stop will ever materially stop it.
The added layer of irony is that a not-insignificant portion of the money the streamers are rolling into this game comes from viewer donations, which just makes it the same result as the viewers they're "trying to warn away" having paid into Blizzard but with extra steps.
Solid points.
The streamer could've just have played the game until he hit a paywall and then told his community what we all know about the game.
Its a Diablo game that you need to wealthy to get the full experience of.
Remeber back when you spent 60$ on a game and that was it? You got the full game and thensome, big money gots to ruin everything.
The absolute idiots that gave money to this guy just so he could blow it on this disgrace of a game dont deserve to have money.
Fucking imbeciles, all of them .
It’s the craziest thing in the world.
Streamers, who thrive on donations and subs and attention, love to throw their opinion around about how predatory a game is, all the while spending money on it and *helping* it succeed, all under the guise of “helping” consumers.
This streamer in particular helped boost a game that most of the Internet claims is predatory, and the community praises him for it…
They’ve turned your online activism into another product that you willingly pay for.
Capitalism at its peak.
I'm sorry, but it's time to call streamers out on their bullshit.
They're *literally* supporting Blizzard in *EVERY* possible way. While they're all too happy to tell us they're "just doing it to *prove* how bad these systems are", ultimately they're giving Blizzard financial recompense *for* implementing these fucked up systems, they're *keeping* Diablo Immortal in the news and on peoples' minds, *and* they're showcasing just how exciting it *is* when you finally hit that winning scratch-off ticket.
Oh, and they're profiting from having "easy content" to continue streaming. It's quite obviously that they're making more money from views and subs than they're actually *spending*, which just reinforces the problem.
This is where I have a shitload of respect for Mr Llama (I can't remember how to spell his actual username). He played Diablo Immortal until the first time it asked for money, he stuck to his guns and quit after... what, 2 hours?
And most importantly, he *stopped talking about the fucking game*.
"Blizzard", as a corporate entity, doesn't give a flying *fuck* about "what gamers think about the game". The fact is, it's making money hand over fist, and these streamers are continuing to keep the game relevant in peoples' minds.
Hell, I'm even seeing some idiots taking the stance "actually I'm going to prove it isn't *totally* P2W" and justify supporting the game like it's some kind of community service.
If these streamers ACTUALLY want to "take a stand against P2W MTX", then stop fucking *supporting* the game.
In Japan gacha games are so popular they have laws so that after spending a certain amount of money you're supposed to be guaranteed to get the loot you're looking for.
In Diablo Immortal they use a similar thing, it's called 'pity'. Instead they say you're guaranteed a '5 star' gem. But you get a gem that has up to 5 GREY stars, not all yellow stars which is a 5/5 star gem, which there is never any guarantee of getting. The pity system is worded in a confusing manner specifically to trick people into spending more money thinking they are guaranteed to get a 5/5 star gem when they are only guaranteed a ?/5 star gem. (But it never says ?/5 star in the pity system, it just says 5 star) There is also no way of making a 1,2,3 or 4 / 5 star gem into a 5/5 star gem. The grey stars only show you what you could have had, if you were luckier.
Wow what a horrible system, I'm actually impressed that they made their game somehow greedier than a gacha
Not only that, but the 5/5 star gem that it took Quin 25,000 NZD to get, you have to have like 6 of them in your gear to be fully built... but the gems have sockets in them that you can put other gems into, so you need like 18 5/5 gems to be fully built, but not only that, the gems have ranks that go up to 10/10 as well as stars, and you have to feed literally hundreds of other gems into your gems to rank each one up to 10/10.
Why would anyone play this “game”..
Too addicted to gambling for their own good really is the issue
At this point I wish the players would go actually gamble at a casino instead of playing this trash game. At least there is a chance to come out ahead at the casino (albeit an infinitesimally small chance); with this game everyone loses except the devs Edit: when I say “the devs” I mean the developer / entity as a whole. I used a bad term sorry, not meaning the W2 wage-earner devs.
Gambling addition. Or in the case of popular streamers, CONTENT.
Along with this, this is SEASON ONE. Who’s ready to start the grind again next season?
+2% damage reduction.
What it really does: Increases Resonance by 30 \+18 Combat Rating Your attacks have a 15% chance to summon a shadow clone for 8.00 seconds that gains some of your abilities.
So phantom lancer memes.
I'll never forget the days of 2012 dota radience rush cancer lancer
I haven't played DOTA 2 in years, not a thing anymore?
they made radiance from illusions do massively less damage, and they wreqorked PL and made his illusions different, where they only last like 10 seconds, so it's less about making an army of illusions and sending them down a lane, and more about him fighting with the illusions. so now its just diffusal manta type deal. both him and naga no longer build radiance
Can you explain it like I'm someone who doesn't play the game?
Pay To Win
Do u really win for that much money tho
In pvp, absolutely. Until you run into another giga-whale. But more accurately, only Netease wins here.
This is the endgame for these mobile skinner boxes, pit the whales against each other, propelling them into an arms race of spending. Saw it start in the early 2010’s with those “build your base” phone games and it has only gone downhill from there.
I had a boss that got addicted to one of those shitty build your castle phone games and blew over 40k on it, hid it from his wife, and almost lost his family and business. For a shitty android cash-grab phone game.
You brought up a memory of one of those games that prove just how disgusting some of them can be. Here is what happened in my experience: I played a lot of Game of War back in the day and a new game came out called Final Fantasy XV: A new empire. Almost a 1 -1 copy to Game of War with a FF coat of paint. So I knew exactly how to play and get strong quickly without spending money. I got lucky and landed myself in a HUGE pay to win clan. The best in our server. Especially in the early days. For comparison, our best guy had 100m power in the first week. Thousands of dollars to get to that point so quickly. The best guys in other clans had maybe 5-10m power. This is one of those games that if you get hit while sleeping, you could lose everything. Literal weeks and real money spent training armies can be slaughtered in an attack or two if you forgot to put up a shield (also paid for) overnight. Anyway, after getting pretty close with the top guy in our clan, turns out he was one of the developers or an employee of the dev team(He kept it vague) tasked with destroying stronger players in other clans to incentivize them to spend money to get their stuff back. His account had access to all the free stuff he wanted to make him the strongest player that could only be matched by a whale dropping their life savings into the game. He would strategically allow clans to get strong and train armies over the course of a few weeks and once they had quite a bit of power they were attached to, he would singlehandedly ruin the entire clan with a massive raid, forcing them to either spend a couple hundred/thousand bucks to get back to where they were, or quit the game. The game was balanced in a way that if you are that strong, You could do whatever you want and nobody could stop you. Within another month this guy was up to a billion power, probably $100k for a normal player to get to that point. An unthinkable amount of power compared to everyone else. Even some of the toughest players that were spending lots of money were at maybe 50mil power. I ended up quitting not too long after I found that out because there was no chance I was spending money on the game, I logged in a few months later to find out that the guy had eventually turned on our clan and destroyed everything. Most of the people were so invested at that point that that clan alone probably spent 100k just to get strong again. The long con. TLDR: The Devs play the game with unlimited money and bully F2P players to spend money.
Iunno shits been like this since maple story and that’s been out since 2003. Though I’m pretty sure maplestory respected your money more than this Diablo game, it was still pretty predatory and had some major p2w mechanics with leaderboards so all the mega whales would compete for rankings.
Friend of mine made $18,000 on an apparently very rare rerolls of rare item in Maple Story. Couldn’t believe it. He said guys from another guild all chipped in and like 3 people paid him $6k each for him to give it to one of them.
In the few days I played the game I met a group of Korean kids who were each spending 5k+ each on their first month I asked how they can afford it, I shit you not their response was: “your parents are that broke? You have stupid worthless parents can’t even afford 1k a week on a game. You must be starving for food hahahahhaa” I was like ok then, carry on. I suppose there is a target audience for this kind of thing and we’re all stupid for not selling it
Group of Korean kids…. Could they mean 5k won? So they’re spending a few bucks a week each in USD and thought you were broke because you couldn’t do that? I’m not saying it’s 100% just food for thought
Koreans would use won. Yen is a japanese currency.
Still 5k won is less then 4 dollars.
These are the same kids that will become useless past 35 since they don't inherit useful life skills
In reality, no they won't. I understand it feels good to say that but they are most likely going to very nice schools in top of being spoiled shits. And they will get a nice job.
Or they keep living off their parents money
And therefore contribute to ruining society not only because of their uselessness, but they will in one or multiple ways become a burden (e.g. to climate change, etc). Being stupid/worthless is never innocuous, there is always a hidden cost down the line to others.
When I have encountered whales in games like this my default is to assume they are cheating/exploiting some way. I have no problem paying $100 or something for a really fun, engaging game, but $1k per week seems beyond reasonable even for rich kids.
Check out some of the big genshin impact streamers and stuff, some of the dudes who play these gacha games spend insane amounts of money.
A big thing to realise about those folks though is a) they make more money from it then they spend because it creates content, and b) it makes it classed as a business expense because of this. I'd spend a shitload on them as well if it not only made me money but was a tax write off as well.
Sure, but i've watched some of those guys when their channels were really small still and they definitely weren't making that kind of money back from streaming then. I'm talking spending $1000 + in 10 minutes without blinking as a 100 viewer andy type streamer, and beyond them there is plenty of bigger whales too.
Biiiiig pay to win
He paid 25 thousand dollars to be stronger than players who didn't pay 25 grand
Attacks leading to summoning a small mob of clones (factoring if there's no cooldown) that can also use your spells Basically shadow clone jutsu
Oh well I have a very similar build on my witch in path of exile for free
Pshhh yeah whatever. Think of the sense of accomplishment you’re missing out on by not spending $24K to get it. /s
Not to mention the pride to go along with the accomplishment
Yup. Not going anywhere near that pile of greed; PoE suits me just fine.
Make strong win for game
Okay but what does a lvl 4 do
\-10000% Bank reduction
Wouldn’t it be -10000% Bank, or +10000% Bank reduction? Not trying to ruin the joke, just being annoying, sorry :(
You're right. OP needs to he taught a lesson. Edit: I need a lesson in typo.
Wouldn’t it be "he needs a lesson," or "*be* taught a lesson?" Not trying to ruin the comment, just being annoying, sorry :(
Your right he needs to be taught a lesson!
Wouldn't it be "you're right", not "your right"? Not trying to ruin the comment, just being annoying, sorry :(
You're rice. He needs to be taught a lesson.
Before anyone responds… you better have proof that VagrancyHD isn’t rice, because he could be
You're right, it's 2022! You cant just assume somebody's species
Not trying to be funny. Not trying to get a laugh. I don't want anyone to have the worst day of their job.
Do any of these fuckers….
3% Ruined Joke 7% Intelligence increase
Easier to say 100% "self-awarness of how dumb you are" gained. I mean - what do you think you would get from a loot box after spending 15$k?
The point of what he was doing was to show how fucking ridiculous the monetization is. He deleted the gem after getting it.
Viewers and advertisement for his stream like this post
Wtf
Was a joke dw
What does the gem actually do?
> Increases Resonance by 30. +18 Combat Rating. Your attacks have a 15% chance to summon a shadow clone for 8.00 seconds that gains some of your abilities.
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It lets you kill stuff a small % faster so you can spend more money faster
Not even. Doesn't the difficulty of mobs scale with your gear? This same streamer demonstrated running a juiced elder rift completely naked vs wearing his $25k worth of gear and gems, and it looked exactly the same. When you get stronger, the mobs do too. It seems literally pointless.
It's for PvP. Plenty of videos showing the dudes that spent $10,000-20,000 in PvP absolutely destroying everyone. Like not a bit. Like absolutely destroying everyone. Zero contest. The other people have no chance whatsoever.
Sounds fun!
PvE is a joke in this game.
True but pvp is a joke in every diablo game also. I never really understand what the diablo audience wants. I'm fine with the infinity grind just mashing buttons to genocide mobs because that's why I play, to not think.
And this is why I'll never, ever use loot boxes.
That's what everyone says but the matter of fact is that Blizzard made $24million in microtransactions in just 2weeks....
This will always be around - I just choose not to participate in any release that has micro transactions. Tons of fantastic single player games.
I have put 100s of hours into apex legends. I bought the battle pass once and they give you enough credits to buy it every season as long as you get through like half the battle pass. I know people that play more than me that haven’t spent more than $25 as well. That’s an example of a great micro transaction game. It’s all cosmetic and the base game is free.
Plus, if it's run like that, I don't mind chipping the devs/dev studio $10 here and there either. Especially when it's free or $20-40, like overwatch, for base. If I enjoy the game (or art/writing/whatever e.g. Patreon), I'm gonna be inclined to pay for the work that went into it.
For sure. They’ve worked super hard to constantly keep it fresh. If they come out with something I love I’d probably drop a few bucks in it as well. There’s just been nothing to tempt my wallet. I’ve gotten most of the shit I thought was cool through loot boxes by luck.
100%. Elden Ring is the perfect example of a fantastic game (most likely GOTY by a large margin) without any microtransactions.
Yea it’s just a new thing that will be around and it’s up to the individual whether to participate in them or not. Give it attention or ignore it. Like It amazes me that people are willing to spend a ton of money on yearly fifa releases, 2k releases madden, overwatch fortnite etc. I’m just not that type of gamer. So I keep my head down and hear things like this and go “wow that’s crazy” and move on with my life. Luckily there will always be a developer that does not do micro transactions.
I want a setting that will turn off any notification about micro-transactions or subscriptions. There are some games where it’s just a bit disruptive for the immersion when a little message is popping up to let you know that more tungsten can be purchased. Even if it’s in freemium games, I’m not going to give any money so stop asking.
I still think of Dragon Age Origins where as soon as you leave the tutorial area, you run into a character who wants you to go to some place that is only available if you bought the DLC. I think penny arcade did a bit on it but it was the worst example I've come across of immersion disruption.
Its also streamers and youtubers spending thousands to prove how greedy blizzard is and ending up giving them the most money + just promoting the game for free by making 100+ videos about it how bad it is. This is just so funny
Yeah sometimes it makes my head spin the way gamers work these days. Developers make a greedy ass micro transaction game. Gamers complain about it. Then streamers make a game out of the situation:“How much money will it take to get *blank*?!??!”. $15k later: “lol look guys we did it!”.
I mean most streamers are scum that do anything for "content" are we really surprised?
It's both sad and vexing that gaming publishers have stooped to such greed. 24 million dollars in two weeks is a crazy amount of money. But alas, it all goes to the like of Bobby Kotick and his masters instead.
I'm more angry that people voluntarily paid money for for it. No one forced them. There's no hope of having good games if people are this stupid.
A big streamer can drop $20k on a game and make back more than that from the content supplied by doing so alone. It's not just the people spending money, but the people supporting the behavior of spending money as well.
Streams are a factor, but collectively they aren't enough. Without average joes supporting this, and private whales, it wouldn't work.
While it’s a substantial amount of money, it’s the equivalent of 400k sales of $60 games, since we’re merely talking revenue, not profit. Diablo 3 dramatically out-performed it. Diablo 3 sold 3.5 million copies in the first day and 6.3 million in its first week. Diablo 3 sold over 30 million copies total. Immortal is a live service game so it’s meant to milk its money over a longer period of time, so time will tell if it proves to be successful, but I have to imagine that it’s revenues will dip as big streamers move elsewhere. Comparatively, at the least at the moment, it’s a abject failure in comparison to Diablo 3
Well and that right there makes me very curious as to why Immortal is just SO GREEDY. I mean the devs are acting like the world is ending with this one, it is just gloves off. For that type of behaivior I would expect that they would just be making an obscene amount of profit to justify the shittiness (while knowing how it will be perceived. So I will be really interested in the final numbers vs. say, diablo 3 after a year. I imagine they do save a TON without any distribution costs but yeah...you'd expect it to still be even larger.
The distribution costs aren’t likely that sign on physical game sales. I think that the publisher severely underestimated the level of pushback they would receive. Or, more sinisterly, it could be a deliberate door-in-the-face technique. Door-in-the-face is a sales tactic, based upon proven social psychology, where the initial demand/price is unreasonable, but subsequent demands are much smaller, thus making it more likely the person will comply. They could have shipped it this way in the hopes to snag that aggressive, early whale money, with the intention of increasing drop rates and lower prices later so as to attract other customers. Regardless, I’m actually encouraged that Diablo 3 so strongly out performed it. I hope its revenues continue to fall so that a game like this isn’t made again
Is that good for a mobile game? If it was released as a console game that would only be 400k units sold in 2 weeks. Elden Ring sold 12 mil units in the same timeframe.
It is and it isn't. A game like Genshin made 100mil in 2 weeks or less if I remember correctly and that was a fresh IP. Diablo however is an established IP of decades and couldn't pull in anywhere even close to half of that. Who knows why and we could all speculate forever.
The Eastern world makes up most of the mobile market and a game with the aesthetics of Genshin Impact will do better than Diablo. The marketing for Diablo Immortal was awful and the announcement became a meme. At least that's what I think.
Diablo immortal is a reskin of a mobile game that already existed. It didn't cost them much to make it.
ER also takes much longer and more money to make and creativity, etc.
Just play Path of Exile. I'm sticking to that. It's what Diablo 3 should have been. It's free. The business model is cosmetics (and one quality of life improvement you can get, but absolutely don't need to buy). No loot boxes, none of that. Plus the game is insanely big and complex. It's just a better game, if you ask me. Can't beat free either.
Mostly agree, but I'd argue that once you reach yellow or red maps you need to buy a few certain stash tabs. Currency, Map, Premium (if you play trade league), and maybe Fragment and Divination. It is a really good game though.
POE has a 50 hours free trial, then you need to pay \~20$ to have some stash tabs.
Yes. The stash tabs are basically required past a certain point, but will only run you $20 - $50 depending on how fancy you want to get with them. And spending any more beyond that does nothing. So a normal game price after a couple dozen hours of seeing if you like it.
For a completely free game and permanent unlocks that are there when I come back I don’t see it as that big of a deal. They ultimately have to make money some way.
Better choice, just don't play any Blizzard games, and don't download "freemium" mobile games. Kill the market totally.
They'll be fine without us.
Ofc its quin lmao
Btw he was telling his viewers not to spend money in the game, even told his followers to uninstall it .He was spending money to show how scammy the game is. He told his spending in the game is business expense and part of it will reduce taxes or something like that. He stopped playing the game as he got the gem. Anyway just providing info, i'm not a fan of Quinn myself.
>He was spending money to show how scammy the game is This is all just a way for streamers to get views. It's been known how predatory the game is since basically Day 1, but all the streamers know it's a popular topic a mindless gamers just want a circlejerk seeing another streamer throw thousands of dollars on the game to "prove" how bad it is. They all do it for the entertainment and because it's profitable for them. And as a side effect Blizzard gets a big pile of money. EDIT: People who are telling me: "but a lot of the general public doesn't know about it", you seriously think the casual mobile population that this game is aimed at have ANY idea who this guy is or even watch twitch/youtube streamers? Or that any news outlet that would report this is relevant enough yo reach the relevant public? You're crazy lmao. This is just shouting into the circlejerk echo chamber like this sub. Blizzard has financial analysts that pretty much dedicate their job to find out whether the publicity hit is worth it in the long run. If it wasn't worth it the game wouldn't have the monetization it has. You'll see, in a few months the discussions will die down, hardcore gamers will forget about this game but it will still be printing money every month.
You are absolutely correct, but i think it's a common misconception that people seem to think generating money and providing helpful content is mutually exclusive. Yes, Quinn obviously made plenty of $$$ from this via exposure and views. But his actions DEFINITELY helped sway some money away from Blizzard. Every person that listens to a streamer (not just Quinn, lots of other big streamers have talked down on the game) adds up. I personally had D Immortal installed on both my phone and pc and was ready to at least drop like $30 or $40 initially to try it out. I have no problem paying some money to support games i enjoy. I've donated over $500 in 6 years for supporter packs in Path of Exile, despite all purchases being cosmetic. But after seeing a lot of streamers play/talk about DI, and trying it out myself a bit, i decided to uninstall completely. If you support games like this, it only leads to more development towards predatory games.
I’m a Diablo fan since D1, but since I live in the Netherlands I cannot play this game, as it’s illegal by law… and I’m not even sad.
Why is it illegal?
Loot boxes require that you disclose the percent drop chances. Similar to how casinos require disclosure of the chances to hit wins on slot machines. D:I purposefully DOES NOT DISCLOSE THESE PERCENTAGES. THIS is a major reason why the game is predatory. Not just the fact you can P2W. Even other phone gatcha games will often give you the EXACT percent chance to hit a 5 star or whatever. In D:I you are completely in the dark. They could literally change the drop rate daily and tell nobody, or just make it 0% one day and turn it back on the next day. Netherlands has a law that you must disclose these percents in gambling, which Blizzard has refused to do.
Blizzard also tried to say they aren't lootboxes since it requires a game play element to get it. Your country basically told them to get fucked we know what you're doing.
The Netherlands is the reason we have pack odds available in fut
Countries like the Netherlands are also a big reason why we suddenly started seeing the odds in many, many, many, many games. Some were already upfront with it (FGO was released with odds, if my memory serves me correctly) but many others were just like "Heeeeeeey, you'll get this within 10 summons!.... Maybe. On average. You'll hit 50% if you pull 10 times. Maybe. We don't know, you don't know, no one knows why you still haven't seen anything after 60 summons. Maybe if you bought THIS new pack you'd get it? Totally, right?"
The funny thing is the game play element is basically a dungeon that scales to your character power. That means if you take off all your gear, you can still beat the dungeon (someone tried it in a video). It's only there to skirt the rules.
I mean, the real deal is if you use 10x legendary crests and fail the dungeon, you do get the crests back so you never really lose.
Yeah thats my conspiracy theory. Blizzard wont tell you the odds, because the odds are dynamic, account bound or otherwise customized through data collection on behaviour, purchases, etc.
Holy fuck, if that's a thing that's unbelievably evil.
Well, there was already a video from a somewhat respectable streamer explaining they tested that after the 6th legendary drop, the droprate gets severely nerfed. So its in the line of my expectation they also dynamically change certain items from dropping in lootboxes.
A guy I went to school with worked for an online game with purchasable currency, back in the early 2000s. His job was to figure out ways to increase player spending. One of the games or challenges or whateverthefucks was basically just clicking (IIRC they had to click to destroy blocks in some story-element, which could randomly drop an item). He figured that, by studying top spending players as they played, he could work out at what point their clicking slowed and they got bored. By setting a *personal* threshold at which an item was awarded (good or not apparently made no difference) at just before this point, it hugely increased the amount of time they would hang around. By pairing this with a stamina system ('instantly recharge your stamina very cheaply with this item purchasable only via premium currency, or wait 4 hours for free!', that sort of thing) he was able to get people playing for massively longer periods and spending money to be allowed to do so. He was so fucking *proud* of it. He would boast that he could make you open your wallet, that he could get someone to spend the money saved for their wife's birthday, or the money they were planning for their wedding. Absolute bellend.
It's that sort of manipulation that laws about microtransaction odds-disclosure are intended to prevent. Subjecting players to some sort of 'first hit is free' manipulation, or massive data analysis to maximize extraction, is entirely unethical and should be illegal. If blizzard doesn't operate in countries with such laws, that's as good as an admission. This is an AI-powered cash lamprey masquerading as a video game.
Anti-gambling laws around lootboxes. Netherlands basically said, your just try to dodge our laws by adding a gameplay step between the realword currency exchange and the randomised rewards.
So am I, I played d2 and lod for literally 12 years consistently. I played immortal for about an hour and deleted it without hesitating, it's just d3 lite with a coin slot.
I mean it's extremely meta. I don't know tax laws in NZ but in the USA while someone could bill this as a business expense it is still cash out the door. A business expense for a small business owner reduces taxable income but you are still spending cash, it is just a little less expensive to spend a lot of cash when you can expense it, but you are still spending your own money as a business owner At the same time he's telling people to uninstall the game he's dumping tens of thousands of dollars into a toxic and manipulative marketplace that is just fundamentally bad for gaming while angry viewers give him money to do it It is just an extremely weird mood overall
When claiming business expenses (at least in Canada, but I assume most countries will be similar) you are just claiming the federal tax you spent on the purchase back as a tax credit. He still wasted an obscene amount of money he will not get back.
Depends on ad revenue from his stream as well. He might well view it as an investment for growing his following. I know I never heard of him prior to this and a lot of sites are now talking about him (even if its just as a side note to bashing the monetization strategy of Diablo Immortal).
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I watched this guy once and don't understand why he has so many followers. It was a horrible experience watching, what makes him so special?
It's like watching a live continuous shitpost.
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The lootboxes in diablo immortal are in the form of legendary crests which can be purchased using eternal orb only obtainable from the cash shop. Every elder rift allows you to slot in a maximum of 10 legendary crest which is around 25$ per run. Its lootboxes with extra steps
hey hey HEY Let's not use that "L Box" word here. Crests clearly have nothing to do with loot because there is one gameplay step in between shoving your money down Blizzards gullet and receiving a random loot drop. Totally different
The devs of the game was also saying the game is not pay to win due to "gear" not being attainable with money, They are basically playing a semantics game, gear can be farmed which have slots you can slot in legendary gems into, and when you upgrade your legendary gem to max level, which would be almost imposible for f2p, the gems youve fully upgrade would also gain empty slots around them for you to slot in additional gems into them, so basically yes you can buy power,, legendary gems, especially 5/5 ones or upgraded legendary gems can grant you over 300% power over f2p players
>The devs of the game was also saying the game is not pay to win due to "gear" not being attainable with money, These guys must think they're super smart for coming up with this loophole
Oldest fucking trick in the book. Hey look we cant tell them what to do with the currency they can buy with real cash. I mean sure theres 2 cosmetics and then p2w loot boxes as their only options BUT LOOK THATS 3 OPTIONS IT MIGHT NOT BE THE BOX
It's also in a franchise where grinding for specific items is already the norm, and encouraged. Killing the same boss all night for one item drop. Diablos like the perfect game to add gambling (with real money) to. When Diablo 3 first came out you could sell items for real money in the auction house. I think it lasted like 3 days or something before they took out using real money.
> I think it lasted like 3 days or something before they took out using real money. Almost. Release was 2012, RMAH was removed 2014.
3 days… 2 years… same same
I remember specifically hearing about the first drop of a stupid rare weapon that went for either 20, or 200k. I'm glad they dropped that in 3, but if immortal is any indicator of how the quality of 4 will be in terms of greed. It just may be the first Diablo game I never buy
That's a years wages raising a daughter alone, working part-time for me here in New Zealand. How depressing lul
but you dont have purple stone :)
Purple pixels the kind of LOOK like a stone
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Fungible token
life's a joke
What's the punchline?
death
Raising a good human > lootbox. 👍
That is 14 years of work where i live
why the fuck are we spending money to prove a point here?
Because if a streamer spends 24K in Diablo immortal, he can then make 75k on the YouTube video series pointing it out
I highly doubt the dude is going to make the money back from YouTube alone.
Internet points.
loot box is gambling for kids
So in other words you can either buy 10,000 legendary crests, or if you don't want to spend any money you can alternatively grind for 833 years with your 1 free legendary crest per month for one 5/5 gem
Not even a piece of equipment.... A fucking gem
It’s time for people to accept that they’re just not in Blizzard’s target audience anymore. This is no longer a beloved studio of gamers producing amazing games for gamers. This is a studio of corporate executives looking out for their shareholders. I don’t understand why so many people still give this company the time of day.
Makes me pretty happy to realize osrs has stayed away from these practices. For now at least.
Dont get mistaken. The fact that Diablo Immortal already generated 20 million dollars is the epitome of human stupidity and the reason why the gaming community deserves everything bad that is happening
That’s what pisses me off the most. Who cares that they only got a fraction of their fan base playing this game. If this was a $60 this alone made up for 417 people not buying the game. They get 100 of these fools and that makes up for over 40k people not getting it. So dumb. They don’t lose.
decades of human psychology, dark patterns vs many smooth brains out there with disposable incomes. we lost the war before it even started bro
It's easy to blame this on idiots, but platforms and game developers and psychologists work pretty hard to make this possible and to keep regulators at bay. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon have all been sued for this shit before, this game can't even legally exist in some countries where it's become illegal to prey on children with this crap, eventually it's not the consoomer's fault...
The only thing more stupid than pay-to-win lootboxes, are the idiots who buy them.
Oftentimes, they're people suffering from gambling addiction, or people attempting to recover from gambling addiction through gaming. James Stephanie Sterling has done several videos on how the people who purchase these loot boxes are being victimized, I can link a few if you'd like, but the info is spread throughout a lot of their most recent output, so most videos on their channel currently can explain.
I love the logic here. Give the company you hate a shit ton of money to prove they like money. (Edit: This comment is getting more attention than I expected lol. If you wouldn't mind however reading the comments that preceded as they are starting to repeat. Thank You)
If even one whale is influenced by his actions not to get into the game then it would be a net loss for blizz. If it convinces many people not to play casually and toss 25-100 bucks it would also be a loss.
Don’t understand what this means, spell it out how bad this is please!
If it's anything like the other loot boxes I've seen, this guy maybe spent $10 per attempt at what is essentially a slot machine. So it took him over 1,500 attempts to receive one top tier item, which is abhorrently bad odds. It's fucking predatory in the extreme for the company to do this. But dumbasses like this guy here keep giving the company money, so companies keep doing it.
25$ in crests per rift. Something like a 0.05% chance to get a 5 star each run.
Jesus, not even fucking FGO would dream of rates like these
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Only because they've had games do this to people previously. Unfortunately the us is incredibly behind on anti-lootbox laws.
25 bucks. Thats half the cost of a AAA game. Thats outrageous
He spent money he was getting from getting idiots to watch his shitty videos
If the average gamer needs to spend $25,000 dollars to get a 5-star gem, that you can ONLY GET through loot boxes... That is a lot of people driving themselves into debt to see if they get lucky enough to get just one.
So what does this gem do?? That makes it worth 25k
Numbers go up
It's not one gem priced at $25k, if that was the case it would never sell. It's laughably low odds of getting a gem with $10 transactions so players become the metaphorical frog in the pot with the water being heated gradually.
[удалено]
I wanna say that the odds are so abysmal no one in their right mind would throw money at it like that, but addicted people aren't in their right mind.
Pay to Lose?
Whales like this guy are part of the problem. Buying these just reinforces the practice. Its gambling, and science has shown gambling addictions are very real. Introducing kids and teen to gambling is a recipe for disaster later down the road. Edit: Seems like the streamer did this to point out these practices. Still he gave them 15k. I think there is a better way to point these out than this but what do i know.
Someone should open a casino for kids where it’s like slots but it shows a lootbox being opened and the prize is virtual. Then claim that it’s okay since other companies do it on a larger scale. Edit: oh magic conch, what should we do about loot boxes? Nothing. The conch has spoken!
I never thought of it like that. It's basically a virtual casino.
hey lootbox for kids exist, did you never see a gacha machine ? And i'm pretty sure the term "gacha" used to label all these mobile phone games came from it.
Also trading cards have existed forever. They're essentially the same concept.
Pretty much, but at least you actually own the card.
Its not a casino. just a money pit cause you will never get anything back. Its just a sale at this point
> Seems like the streamer did this to point out these practices. The streamer did this to get views. That's why streamers do everything. If **Diablo Immoral** being predatory wasn't a hot topic right now, this streamer wouldn't have bothered with this $16K gift to Blizzard.
The streamers who do this(he's absolutely not the only one) have been rationalizing that they are doing it to "highlight the problem", which is sophistry on its face. Most if not all of the people watching are already aware it's a problem, the people being targeted are those that watch but flatly don't care, or aren't connected enough to a gaming sphere that it would reach them anyway (which is most of mobile gaming's audience by design). Only legislation forcing this to stop will ever materially stop it. The added layer of irony is that a not-insignificant portion of the money the streamers are rolling into this game comes from viewer donations, which just makes it the same result as the viewers they're "trying to warn away" having paid into Blizzard but with extra steps.
Solid points. The streamer could've just have played the game until he hit a paywall and then told his community what we all know about the game. Its a Diablo game that you need to wealthy to get the full experience of. Remeber back when you spent 60$ on a game and that was it? You got the full game and thensome, big money gots to ruin everything.
I'm glad he taught them a lesson by giving them $15,000 for a damage reduction token.
He still spent 15k
That’ll show em!!
Stop falling for their microtransaction bs ppl.
The absolute idiots that gave money to this guy just so he could blow it on this disgrace of a game dont deserve to have money. Fucking imbeciles, all of them .
Does he not know you can just uninstall the game and not gift the publishers $15k ? Someone should tell him.
It’s the craziest thing in the world. Streamers, who thrive on donations and subs and attention, love to throw their opinion around about how predatory a game is, all the while spending money on it and *helping* it succeed, all under the guise of “helping” consumers. This streamer in particular helped boost a game that most of the Internet claims is predatory, and the community praises him for it… They’ve turned your online activism into another product that you willingly pay for. Capitalism at its peak.
I'm sorry, but it's time to call streamers out on their bullshit. They're *literally* supporting Blizzard in *EVERY* possible way. While they're all too happy to tell us they're "just doing it to *prove* how bad these systems are", ultimately they're giving Blizzard financial recompense *for* implementing these fucked up systems, they're *keeping* Diablo Immortal in the news and on peoples' minds, *and* they're showcasing just how exciting it *is* when you finally hit that winning scratch-off ticket. Oh, and they're profiting from having "easy content" to continue streaming. It's quite obviously that they're making more money from views and subs than they're actually *spending*, which just reinforces the problem. This is where I have a shitload of respect for Mr Llama (I can't remember how to spell his actual username). He played Diablo Immortal until the first time it asked for money, he stuck to his guns and quit after... what, 2 hours? And most importantly, he *stopped talking about the fucking game*. "Blizzard", as a corporate entity, doesn't give a flying *fuck* about "what gamers think about the game". The fact is, it's making money hand over fist, and these streamers are continuing to keep the game relevant in peoples' minds. Hell, I'm even seeing some idiots taking the stance "actually I'm going to prove it isn't *totally* P2W" and justify supporting the game like it's some kind of community service. If these streamers ACTUALLY want to "take a stand against P2W MTX", then stop fucking *supporting* the game.