author: Miriam Moszczynska
Blizzard has Become a Parody of Itself
Blizzard once joked about pay-to-win, only to now bluntly pack Diablo Immortal with just such content. Gamers have unearthed one of StarCraft's commercials.
Not only the condition of Diablo Immortal (microtransactions etc.) can be considered a joke, but also Blizzard's approach to game design. As it turns out, not so long ago, less than 5 years to be specific, the studio mocked pay-to-win in one of its commercials.
P2W? You have to be kidding!
The video in question was released to celebrate StarCraft II's switch to free-to-play model. According to the announcement, the game was to be free of microtransactions, thus mocking the business model of Star Wars: Battlefront II.
The fate of StarCraft
While we can joke that it's an ironic twist of fate, it is worth noting that a large part of the team involved in the development of StarCraft II is no longer working at Blizzard.
As we know, two years ago the studio announced that support for the game would be reduced to the necessary minimum and StarCraft II will no longer receive new content, and this was tantamount to many departures.
Some veterans who left the ranks of Blizzard, founded studio Frost Giant, which is set to present its debut game at Thursday's Summer Game Fest event.
And the second company established in the wake of end of support for StarCraft II is Dreamhaven. It brings together two minor studios, Moonshot and Secret Door. Dreamheaven has not yet released or announced any games.
Oh, Blizzard...
Perhaps if Blizzard maintained an approach like the one in the commercial, Diablo Immortal would have looked a bit different now. We can only speculate on that, after all, the mobile Diablo only follows the path set by gacha games.
Nevertheless the community summed up the whole situation with a meaningful "aged like milk", which perfectly reflects the regression, that Blizzard has made towards F2P games.
