The mobile game Diablo Immortal is considered a sin of Blizzard by many players and fans of Diablo, a disgrace, a manipulative play-to-win hell. People publicly cursed the game, which turned the long-standing love of Diablo fans into bare cash. Even in Germany, the outrage in forums about Diablo Immortal and Blizzard was great, but the revenue figures tell a different story a year after release.
How successful is Diablo Immortal?
- According to a mix of analysis and estimation from the data company data.ai, Diablo Immortal generated $525 million in revenue in the first year since release. It is estimated that there are nearly 22 million downloads worldwide. Diablo Immortal was released on June 2 for iOS, Android, and Windows.
- Only 14 mobile games have broken the $500 million mark faster: these include games like Pokémon GO, Candy Crush Saga, or Genshin Impact. Among MMORPGs, Diablo Immortal is the 3rd most successful mobile game overall.
- The actual revenue from Diablo Immortal is even higher than the $525 million that data.ai assumes. This is because the revenues from some Android marketplaces are missing. The revenue from the PC is also not included in the sales figures.
Many Diablo fans would have wished for these classes in another game of their favorite series:
Germans spend €15.4 million on Diablo Immortal
Where does the money come from? As expected, the most money has been spent by players from China. Diablo Immortal was developed in collaboration with NetEase. Experts always thought that Blizzard was targeting the Chinese market with the title, where there has been so much trouble recently.
There was also turmoil around Diablo Immortal in June 2022 in China, but that seems to have settled down quickly enough for Blizzard:
- It was able to generate 36.8% of the revenue in China.
- The USA ranks second in spending on Diablo Immortal with 24.4%.
- Gaming-crazy South Korea follows with 8.7% of the revenue.
- Germany accounts for 3.3% share.
The 3.3% share of the $525 million revenue amounts to about $17.33 million – roughly €15.4 million.
The enthusiasm for the “pay-to-win” Diablo seems to be significantly greater in Germany than in comparable countries like France (1.3%), Japan (2.2%), or the United Kingdom (1.2%). Spain (0.4%) and Italy (0.7%) perform weaker.
In some of our European neighbors like Belgium and the Netherlands, Diablo Immortal was not allowed to be sold.
This is what it’s about: This reiterates that the biggest money in gaming, even in mobile gaming, is made in the USA and China.
However, among European markets, Germany is still the largest.
The rejection of mobile games and microtransactions, which one often reads in comments and forums, does not seem to be reflected in the purchasing behavior of the Germans. However, one must keep in mind that the figures are absolute and not per capita.
The USA has about 4 times more inhabitants than Germany, but even spends 7 times as much money on Diablo Immortal as we do – we are not as bad as Americans in the aspect of “willingness to pay for a mobile pay-to-win Diablo” yet.
Twitch streamer sinks over €15,000 into Diablo Immortal until he gets the desired item
