Diablo Immortal received strong criticism after launch and was bombarded with poor reviews. Nevertheless, the game is doing financially very well and with the delayed launch in China, it has increased its player base by a third.
This is the status of Diablo Immortal: Since the launch on June 2, Blizzard’s new game has had to struggle with a wave of negative reactions and review bombing from the fans.
Criticism was mainly directed at the cash shop and monetization of Diablo Immortal, which is especially Pay2Win in the endgame and uses psychological tricks to get money out of players’ pockets.
However, the negativity did not change the fact that the ARPG became very successful. Just a week after launch, they reported a revenue of 10 million dollars, and the number continued to rise.
On July 28, the analysis site SensorTower reported that Diablo Immortal surpassed 100 million dollars in revenue, which was earned through the Google Play Store and the App Store. This means that the figure is likely much higher since PC revenues were not counted.
First, a threat of ban, then exploding player numbers
There was, however, a major problem for Blizzard with Diablo Immortal. The launch in China, one of the largest mobile markets in the world, was supposed to take place in mid-June, but was long in limbo.
That’s why there were problems with China: The reason for a possible ban of Diablo Immortal was a statement allegedly from one of Blizzard’s marketing team members. It indirectly demanded that the Chinese head of state, Xi Jinping, should resign.
Accordingly, it looked for some time as if Blizzard would lose the license to release Diablo Immortal from the state. But even that turned out positively for the game.
Diablo Immortal celebrated its official launch in China on July 25, causing player numbers to shoot up. Just 2 days before the release, the game’s official Twitter account celebrated that the number of active players exceeded 20 million.
Less than a week later, the next tweet followed, as this number was increased by a whopping 50% to 30 million. As a small “thank you,” players can receive an additional legendary emblem as well as 6 rare chests.
Blizzard can soon look forward to a new revenue milestone, as mobile players in China are known to have few problems with Pay2Win mechanics and strong monetization.
A western player tested how much loot a Free2Play player would get in Diablo Immortal:
