The Twitch streamer Asmongold is known for his criticism of Blizzard, microtransactions, and Pay2Win. He wanted to escalate this criticism with a ‘satirical’ stream, purchasing everything that Diablo Immortal offered him in terms of microtransactions. However, many of his fans did not understand this criticism – his reaction was to delete angry posts against him.
That was apparently Asmongold’s idea:
- The Twitch streamer Asmongold is known for being critical of Blizzard and “Pay2Win” systems. He actually wishes for games where you can’t buy anything through microtransactions that has any impact on the game. However, he still fully embraces the hype around games like Lost Ark.
- Therefore, he viewed Diablo Immortal, Blizzard’s new mobile game, critically from the start and often cynically lashed out against it. Cash shops are fundamentally an abomination to him (via twitter).
- In a first stream, he wanted to demonstrate just how Pay2Win Blizzard’s new game, Diablo Immortal, is: He said he would conduct a “deliberately Pay2Win” stream, buy everything the game offers him, and run a dollar counter.
We show you the 6 classes of Diablo Immortal – in our tier list you can see who is currently leading:
Asmongold becomes the largest Twitch streamer for Diablo Immortal with “Pay2Win”
This is how the first stream went. Asmongold showed two streams over the last 2 days on Diablo Immortal: In total, he was on air for 10 hours and had an average of 90,000 viewers. This is less than he achieved with his coverage of the trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, yet he was by far the largest streamer for Diablo Immortal. He was well ahead of Quin69 and shroud.
But Asmongold actually went through with his plan and, according to himself, already spent about 320 € in Diablo Immortal on his first day in 5 hours. He even stated on Twitter that he regretted spending so little. He would have liked to pay even more.
Viewers express disappointment in Asmongold, accuse him of hypocrisy
This was the reaction: Many of his viewers were angry at Asmongold for now doing exactly what he has always criticized: spending money in a cash shop.
For him, 320 € may be nothing, but for many others, that is a lot of money that they can’t easily spend.
Some people expressed their disappointment in him: What is he doing? This is hypocritical, to now spend money when he has always spoken out against it.
Asmongold deletes criticism from disappointed fans live on Twitch
This is how Asmongold reacted: In a Twitch stream about Lost Ark, Asmongold said:
“I will solve the problem the way I always do. I simply delete all threads and ban the people”.
Then it was seen how he went through reddit posts that criticized him for his Pay2Win stream, he marked these posts and deleted them later.
This leads to people now criticizing Asmongold for silencing criticism of him through deletion.
People say things like:
- This shows how sensitive he is. One user calls him “Fragile Andy”.
- Even Quin69 handles criticism better than Asmongold – that’s saying something.
- A third says: Asmongold deliberately provokes conflicts. That creates angry reactions. But Asmongold cannot handle the controversy he generates and then needs to take a break. It’s as if he ignites a fire and then complains about the heat.
Mods apologize for their boss
The mods on reddit explicitly clarify in the wave of criticism that they are not the ones deleting the posts, but “their boss” – they can therefore do nothing (via reddit).
This is what’s behind it: If you follow his logic, Asmongold is fundamentally against Pay2Win streams and wants to address that by intentionally spending a lot of money. But even knowing that, one can criticize his behavior.
His streams benefit when he spends a lot of money. This allows him to progress faster in Diablo Immortal and people prefer watching him, than a streamer who is progressing more slowly in Diablo Immortal.
In any case, many “normal players” accuse Asmongold of using his special status as a “celebrity” to gain advantages, for example in WoW Classic, when players handed him gold and items just because he is Asmongold.
With his behavior, Asmongold sets an example for an audience of hundreds of thousands: It’s okay to spend money in Diablo Immortal. Because even Asmongold does it. For many, the fun and irony stop when it comes to money.
He is quite a controversial figure on Twitch, Asmongold:
How he then deals with criticism by simply deleting it is surely also meant to be ironic, but is not very funny.
The discussion about whether the game is “Pay2Win” currently overshadows the launch of Diablo Immortal:
I played Diablo Immortal for 15 hours without spending money – How important is the shop?
