Diablo Immortal Launches Today; Reviews are Good But Microtransactions Worry [UPDATED]
We lived to see the release of Diablo Immortal. The game collects good feedback from mobile players, but some elements of the business model are worrying.
Update: The hour of the official launch and unlocking of beta version of Diablo Immortal on PC has come. On this occasion, you should read this article, in which the developer warns about the known problems encountered in the game. The text will be updated on a regular basis.
Diablo Immortal, a mobile spin-off of the popular action RPG series, has launched.
- The game is already available on iOS and Android mobile devices.
- On PC, you can currently only take advantage of the preload option (via Battle.net). As previously announced, unlocking of PC version should take place today at 10 am PT.
- On all three hardware platforms, the game uses a free-to-play model with microtransactions.
- Diablo Immortal offers cross-play option, enabling the owners of different hardware platforms to play together.
Good debut of Diablo Immortal
The figures achieved by the game in just a few hours after its release are impressive.
- Android edition of Diablo Immortal has been downloaded more than one million times.
- On Google Play the game already has over 81.4 thousand user ratings, and their average is 4.8/5.
- At the time of writing Diablo Immortal is the most downloaded game on Google Play in, among others United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Poland.
Diablo Immortal's business model raises concerns
The game's debut was a great success, but there is no shortage of criticism that revolves around the business model.
- According to the traditions of the series, players can go to the so-called Rifts, which are dungeons filled with valuable rewards.
- The problem is that with micropayments you can buy items that increase your chances of getting good loot in such challenges.
- These items can only be acquired with virtual currency purchased with real money or earned through Battle Pass.
- In practice, Rifts are loot boxes, in which before reaching the rewards we must first go through dungeons with monsters.
- The whole endgame was designed in such a way that getting the best items requires either using these microtransactions or grinding Rifts, which, without paying, offer low chances of getting the most valuable loot.
The true scale of the problem won't be known until some time later, when large groups of players begin to reach the endgame. Then we will find out how balanced this element of the game is.
- Also the adopted cosmetic item policy is being criticized. They are assigned only to a single character on a particular server. This solution was probably introduced in order to force buying them again in case of changing a character/server.
As a consolation we can mention that impressions from the game itself are very good. First opinions suggest that at least up to a certain point you can have fun without spending real money. Diablo Immortal is said to offer nice graphics, polished gameplay and controls, which perfectly adapt the series' mechanics to the specifics of touch screens.
At the end, it's worth mentioning that the game has many minor problems, which is unfortunately typical for debuts of large online titles. Players report, among other things, that some of the abilities do not work and Russian bots spamming anti-Ukrainian content plague chats. Diablo Immortal also has a distinct dislike of Samsung phones.. Users of some models report visual errors and overheating.
