Remember when finding hidden game mechanics wasn't depressing?

Like finding Yoshi in SM64 for completing the entire game? Like the havok physics in Half-Life and Max Payne 2? Like Star Road in Super Mario World? Like the Master Quest for naming Link Zelda in LoZ? Yeah, no, paying money for loot generation is clearly peak game design.

This hit me way too hard

I do from souks games

Not if we're looking at the last 5-7 years.

Its actually impressive how much of a 'maze' they created with all the microtransactions. This isnt just lazy mobile game monetization, this is scarily well thought out and scientifically designed to prey upon consumers. Now if only they put this same effort towards everything else they do...

I find it impressive how people actually play this game and proudly proclaim how they spent 10k+ dollars on it.

"Now only if they put this same effort towards everything else they do..." Smh they do they also prey upon women

They've been doing this for years in all of their games. Why do you think these unpopular reward systems keep popping up in WoW expansion after expansion. They are sitting on a treasure trove of wealthy western consumer data and have been more and more narrowly targeting that cash for YEARS.

@@din6675 wait, WoW has those micro transactions now? The only thing I can think of is the level token.

Dear lord, how blizzard destroyed almost 30 years of reputation in around 5 or 4 is actually astonishing to me.

Welp it's not like it's gone into nothing. They didn't destroy it. They sold some of it for cash...

Oh boy, that ship sailed a long time ago

Lots of em lost reputations. Great giants like Rockstar

@@Fiery. to the chinese.

Bro this is the best designed predatory monetization system i have ever seen. Its full on psychological warfare at every turn.

The scary part is how visible so much of it is. Like, its right there, unapologetically out in the open and in your face. And yet people are still playing, and still buying things on the cash shop. Its like most gamers are completely okay with the horrifying precedent this game is setting.

@@D.J.Berryman That's because most *mobile* gamers ARE completely okay with this... And it's not a precedent, this is the NORM for mobile games :P Welcome to the future of PC and Console games too. Edit : Why do you think blizzard was so desperate to have this game made? The mobile game customer base is a literal farmyard of cows waiting for their overlords to come and milk them...

@@auquitaine9201 this kind of bullshit on a LOWER level is why I stopped with phone games, but alas its now coming to PC

Crack dealer literally have more ethics. And they want to put them in jail if someone ODs. Think about that.

imagine a game so predatory in it's P2W antics that it takes a seasoned MMO/game veteran reviewer like JSH to make a second video because the near-scam level trickery is so bad he couldn't possibly spot all of it in one video...speechless...I'm honestly surprised it's legal.

In some countries, it’s literally not legal!

DI is not available in belgium for a reason

in what way is it predatory? selling something isnt predatory and nobody is forced to purchase anything in the game

This also means FtP players can NEVER interact with the marketplace. They cannot sell their weaker legendary gems in hoping to grind enough platinum to eventually buy themselves one of the legendary gems that are actually worth something. Everything in Diablo Immortal feels like its designed to discriminate against FtP players. Guilds won't have you cuz you're too weak. You won't be able to find people to co-op rifts with because if you aren't providing legendary crests yourself you will make their odds worse. And theres a whole section of the community that you are gated from until you pull out your wallet. If this game sets a precedent the future will be games made by soulless companys specifically for rich people while poor people are gated out from the real game.

Most gatcha games are like this already. Whales ruin everyone's experience. I played a game where in order to get the top rank of the best characters you'd have to pay $10,000 and a few people did it within a week. A week. Thus only encouraged the devs to make even higher tiers and more expensive characters...to the point where cross server play was dominated by these whales who could best whole servers and deny whole groups of people loot and drops. The devs don't care they ruined the experience for PAYING customers. That is what this is: a means to punish PAYING CUSTOMERS. It's insane.

Honestly... I don't think this is a bad thing. Let the rich c***s who think paying to win is a good mechanic have their own game and leave actual games to actual gamers.

To clarify, you can still interact with the marketplace. Unbound regular gems drop regularly and you can make some platinum from selling those. You can also use the runes you get from running rifts with regular crests to craft an unbound random legendary gem, with different costs in runes for 1 star, 2 star and random 1-5 star legendary gems, so if you get extremely lucky, you could sell a 5 star legendary gem for a massive amount of platinum. Finally, the whole crest system, which Josh never got to explore too much, uses skill stones to switch the skills the crest is boosting and those skill stones can be obtained and sold by free to play players too.

@@DembaiVT Hey, I'm wondering, what game are you talking about? It reminds me of Black Desert

@@nathangamble125 The problem is that a lot of "whales" in these games aren't actually rich wealthy people. They're just normal people stuck in a cycle of addiction and sunk cost fallacy

It's legitimately terrifying how much effort has gone into making the system as predatory as possible

A bunch of little men in closed rooms busy as bee’s working out how to make you do more for less. Disguising eh?

I mean in what else do you think their effort goes? Their last good game was Starcraft 2 which was a long time ago now lol

predatory, just like blizzard employees

6 years of development baby 😉

Definitely more effort put into that than into the shitty gameplay

I´m actually impressed with the amount of effort they are putting on being the worst company ever. Maybe its their dream.

you'd think after the breast milk lawsuit they'd try to fix the company like a normal person but i guess not

@@LunarFortune It's basically free money, and I'm sure we've all dreamt of being rich. What never ceases to amaze me is that so many people out there are willing to be straight up farmed by whales on a daily basis. Like, how does your self respect even get that low?

Darn to think I wanted to work there at some point welp looks like that dream is going in the bin for my sanity

@@LunarFortune the fucking what now?

Hah! If that were only true, it would be wonderful thing if this company even had a chance to be the worst These are baby steps in ways that companies can be awful At least they are not starving babies yet

Can we talk about how Josh apologizes at 6:17 for missing the difference between the two legendary crests in his original video? This man cares more about Blizzard's customers than they do and it really hit me in the feels. Edited to add he also apologized in the description too. We don't deserve him.

"Has hidden wale mechanics that you can't even find until they're sure they got you" How true.

I really hope the rest of the EU implements gambling protection laws like in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Yeah, that's also my hope. But we have to do something for that. Please inform local customer protection offices about the game and it's methods of psychological manipulation/gambling mechanics.

yes and no. I want it, but not in the same way those two countries do it. Their gambling laws also make any purely cosmetic lootbox-like systems unavailable in games, even completely free rewards. If it was limited to things that actually give gameplay advantages then sure, I'd love that

Or better yet, imagine if the entire European continent (that includes both EU and non-EU countries) banned lootboxes in general.

@@xNimroder This is good. Proud of my home country. Fuck cosmetic loot boxes.

Unpopular opinion: Reached lvl 60+8 without buying anything, and I can genuinly say I had a blast. The gameplay is pretty cool, specially played on a tablet, with i'd say 20% side quest grind, the rest campaign. Now I quit the game- nothing more to offer. That said I can see how young people with money, or rather, weak minded people (huge percentage I figure) will fall prey to the monetization system. The problem is they only blame the system, not their minds. You actually have the choice not to pay, even learn a lot about self control.

I owe my entire career to Diablo 2. Researching and writing a no-cd crack to no longer require my scratched up disks was my first step into IT. It kills me to see what Diablo has become. Diablo 3 started off fun and even the storefront was useful before they allowed money. Once the marketplace could be manipulated for cash, it was dead within days. Fuck Blizzard and fuck EA. I will NEVER play Diablo Immortal.

Um what does EA have to do with Diablo? Also, yes I'm sure Activision-Blizzard are crying over the tons of money they are making off this game that you are not playing it....

@@kicapanmanis1060 idk why ur belittling him for not wanting to play the game. It should be reversed. Because the people who fund this are just telling companies they can lie and disrespect the customer and still make money off their customer base.

@@kicapanmanis1060 EA does the exact same bullshit. Stop supporting the immorality and start supporting the fellow gamer.

Neither Diablo 4, unfortunately.

I just noticed at 5:56 in the Video, that not only does screen where you add the crests before the rift only show the lesser two types of crests, it also add the same border around the crests, that you would use to distinguish between eternal and non-eternal legendary crests.

its disgusting, good catch

I have to say Blizzard really nailed the feeling of selling your soul to the devil.

Hilariously sad

And in the process showed us just how hollow and souless of a company they are.

[Slow clap]

in the past, I played diablo to fight evil, today, I refuse to play diablo to fight evil

This game is diabolical in the truest sense. "Diablo" used to be about slaying monsters, not paying them money.

In a way, I am impressed. It is really a form of art to create a system like this.

It is indeed, the monetization system is really well done.

Same. Some truly genius design at work here.

Las Vegas would like a word.

Ever since seeing this video i want to see more of this kind of content, showing how some popular games released lately or old use disgusting monetisation tricks and such to push people into paying cash. Some people even started to argue that timegating is essential to making content and it exist to decrease addiction while it has a big button saying "pay 1$ to skip the wait". The seven deadly sins videos were great but i wish i could see more of the modern games getting called out on their sins.

Agreed. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Some players will not care, but for those of us who are life long video game enthusiasts, this would be a great service.

Elden Ring: Has hidden game mechanics that make me cry tears of joy. Diablo Immoral: Has hidden game mechanics that make me cry.

I spent a good deal of time wondering why I couldn't sell my legendary gem drops, I've had 2 since I started playing as an entirely F2P player. Thanks as always for discovering and pointing out the blatantly bad systems in games that I always seem to miss

It's crazy that it is someone's job to make these systems. What must that feel like? How do they feeling going home at the end of the day? Do they hate what they produce as much as everyone else? Imagine a life full of possibility, to end up walking down a path that leads to creating psychologically manipulative convoluted economies in mobile games.

They don't care. All they see is numbers and their huge paycheck

They do not sleep well at night, money makes a terrible bed.

They feel great about it. Cue the clip of the soulless corporate video talking about "turning players into payers".

It breaks my heart how extremely predatory this is. Not even cheap copy paste ad games are THIS predatory

On a positive note, you remind me of TotalBiscuit SO MUCH its kind of nuts, maybe its just your natural voice and what you are covering but it freaking epic and I love it. RIP TB. Miss you man. ❤

If TB were alive during the diablo immortal fad he would have literally lost his entire shit and would've said some things that would've gotten him beyond "cancelled" which he would love haha. I miss him...

I also think giving certain times to do competetive play is to encourage whales and make them see their advantage in the game. It is a very clever way to do so. Making PVP for limited times only focuses a huge mass of the playerbase to play at the same time. Giving the whales the advantage to win which they have bought. Otherwise the community would do competetive activities at much more scattered and individual times, likely that only f2p players playing against other f2p players and have fair matches. This is avoided by simply concentrating the available time for such activities.

I'm legitimately shocked, as a player I did not notice this either! I'm disgusted at the levels to which they have gone to con money out of people. It's so upsetting when they didn't need to do anything so underhand! Their reputation was in the toilet after the recent scandals, this just smacks the nail into the coffin

You literally have no reason to apologize. It's not your fault they piled on so many predatory systems that it's near impossible to keep track of them all at the same time. Bravo for all your work

The fact that you did all that research and still missed this unintentionally made your point. You were reporting on their awful practices, and they succeeded in managing to slip their sneakiest, arguably scummiest tactic past you. This whole situation is ludicrously awful. And to think Immortal's announcement got such a chilly reception, and they STILL decided, "Yeah, let's fill it with all this predatory crap, they won't mind!"

It’s because they consider it to be worth all the backlash, which is probably the saddest part. We will hate it, but they don’t care because someone else will fall for it, and it will pay them back multiple times the amount they lost on us not buying in

@@maeghwaron3906 Yep. They don't have any goodwill left to burn, so why not to try scamming couple more receptive customers.

Absolutely right, if even he missed it, it couldn't possibly prove his point more.

it's crazy how people will defend stuff like this, monetisation is fine but when the game spends this much effort to deceive you, something has gone wrong.

The frustration at missing this difference in the free crests vs paid, and the FOMO from not being able to do anything with this legendary gem you don't need.. Brutal. Absolutely brutal.

In the early 2000's, hidden game mechanics were there to enhance the experience for veteran players and give them more reasons to keep playing. Today, hidden game mechanics are there to make money off people who have fallen for the sunken cost fallacy.

When you think it can't get worse, it gets much worse Thank you Josh for all the work and to show us this disgusting predatory tactics so we can boycott the companies that do this

I really hope Blizzard went so far with this game's deceptive monetization practices that it gets legislation started to force companies like this to limit the amount of gambling mechanics or at the very least have more transparency in their practices. Even though I hate mtx, I can accept that it exists as a business model, but the level of deception in this game should not be legal.

You need to look up gem resonance, it's something that unlocks after you max out all 6 of your 5 star legendary gems. You get to socket legendary gems into your maxed legendary gems, and upgrade them as well. A Youtuber by the name of Gregg2G has a video where he goes over it

Doesn't matter how good a game is. Such predatory design should be shunned altogether. Regardless of whether one can play this as a free player and even have fun doing so, the company should not be supported in such kind of behavior. People should realize that a single whale paying thousands or tens of thousands bucks makes up for thousands of free players, and the company will see themselves confirmed in their strategy. There should be proper laws against this kind of game design (and not only on 1 part of gacha features).

This is my thoughts. Sure the gameplay might be decent, but no that does NOT need to be praised. It was good before, it doesn't need to be praised again. It is what it is supposed to be. But this is not going to change, as he mentioned in the last video, the mobile gaming market is bigger than the PC and console market combines. That is accurate. Plenty of people just do not care about this stuff. This game is shit, Diablo is good. Not Diablo abused and beaten by monetization schemes. Also I have never played a Diablo game and don't care too. I just can't stand this type of gaming.

Tl;dr, why "It's their money, they can spend it how they want" is bullshit. An individuals shitty spending decisions affects everyone.

@@FNLNFNLN maybe if people were more discerning about how they spent their time.... games like this shouldn't make it 2 weeks past launch, but noo its trending on twitch rn

@@FNLNFNLN Still the company that's at fault; while I _subjectively, personally_ want to either get whales professional help _or_ kick their teeth in (depending on which type of whale they are), more "objectively" speaking in a business sense, the only one to blame is the company doing this; the consumer will do and use what they are presented with, and end of the day, the one presenting it is the company.

There is nothing good in that game, is just trash. The UI is shit, the characters look like shit, the gameplay loop is boring, the story is boring and soulless, all the combat systems are a mess because the forced pay to win.

As an old school gamer from way back when, Its sad to see how companies put profit over people to this extent. But as long as there are some with more money than brains, this will continue to happen.

This is still one of the best videos on Diablo Immortal I have seen so far. Getting into details, presenting facts than opinions with a high dense of information. Thank Your !!

the most depressing thing is most of these extremely predatory mechanics are all implemented in one variant or another into almost all new AAA games these days - monetization clearly comes first now, the shareholder value is more important than anything else - regardless of plattform

This is ridiculous. I’d ask if this could get any more predatory, but I don’t want to open the door for the possibility. Thank you for the updated information! I highly doubt I’ll play this game, but I’m sure knowing this advanced tactic exists will be useful in *some* way

Thank you Josh for your service to humanity.

It just goes to show how hidden this is when a well educated, intelligent individual who literally analyzes and reviews these systems for a living didn’t immediately notice it.

yea having to read the item description is very well hidden

@@hugepriapism3377 do you always read the terms and conditions of everything you use?

@@nikker1 i dont see what a 42 page long terms and conditions, have to do with a few lines of text for an item - so you never read what ur item / skills does in any games?

@@hugepriapism3377 I think the issue is, this shouldnt exist at all

@@hugepriapism3377 you can't expect to have your playerbase to read everything you've put in the game... some things have to be self explanatory or intuitively easy to understand, like in this case. The crests look exactly the same and share almost the same name, just by putting 'bound' in the description is not enough...people will skip over it, imo they should just put 'bound' in the title or atleast change the fucking color/whole name

We just need stronger regulatory measures asap for these videogame-themed casinos.

I'm a Genshin player (just monthly subscriber), and that is even more disgusting than anything else I've ever seen. Thank you so much, Josh, for such an in-depth look at hell itself.

these systems are so complicated that they are basically impossible to understand for non initiated people. this makes them way more dangerous as they sort of exist in these bubbles of reality where only people who start spending on it are kind of aware of the system in its full complexity. and the people who start spending are not going to be neither the most criticizing crowd neither particularly informed on predatory tactics.

I did spot this difference, and that has been the main reason why I haven't bought orbs or eternal legendary crests directly. Initially, I didn't think I was missing out, because despite this, I have sold (not legendary) gems in the market place, that were unbound when I received them. I have also crafted unbound legendary crests, and have sold those, too. The biggest kicker here though, is that the unbound (not-legendary) gems you can feasibly farm and unbound legendary gems you can feasibly craft without spending money, can only be realistically sold at something between 300 to 1000 platinum. If you want to buy a decent legendary gem, on the other hand, that shit starts at 5k platinum all the way up to 100k platinum.

Update: as of right now, there's another way to get eternal legendary crests as far as I know. By collecting 22 FA runes and crafting it with a jeweler.

There are also hidden caps in this game: After six legendary drops a day, your drop rate severely decreases for future drops. After a group bonus for six normal gems a day, your drop rate severely decreases. Side quests stop giving rewards after five per day. Purple bosses stop giving rewards after five per day Random map events stop giving rewards after five per day. Zoltan Kule treasure rooms are limited to five per day. Hidden Lair dungeons stop giving gem rewards after just a few completed sections.

Battle Pass XP also has a weekly cap!

Daily caps are norm for grindy MMOs, but they are usually well telegraphed. The hidden caps are shitty as fuck.

@@SinaelDOverom Honestly, same. I don’t care as much or at all if an MMO just says “yeah you can’t just spam the fuck out of it” as opposed to “oh yeah, you can do it as much times as you want!*” *Not really, you can only do events x times a day, earn x amount of xp a day, etc, but we won’t flat out tell you that, good luck grinding a hard dungeon and not earning shit after the fact

@@SinaelDOverom but it's not an mmo, it's an ARPG. This specific game model caters very heavily to time spent usually. I'm generally against caps, but I'm against caps even more in games that are specifically designed for grinding. It's counter intuitive

So much for "If you're F2P you can just grind more to catch up"

This whole "game" operates on similar logic to how Josh explained NFTs: Blizzard wants to sell you nothing, but they know you won't buy nothing, so they crafted an elaborate marketplace designed to confuse you into spending as much money as possible and attached some gameplay to it to make the purchases seem worthwhile.

I'm so thankful for this video. I cannot believe that this game has launched with a cash shop that is this PREDATORY. I cannot believe things are this bad and I cannot believe people are playing this game currently. I'm boycotting it immediately and I apologize for the 5 minutes of gameplay I've put into it before

Love the fact that he apologises for messing up during the investigation. It's not your fault its the devs fault. Or actually not the devs, they were doing what they were told. Its the fault of whoever thought that it'd be a good idea to trick people into thinking they were actually doing something of worth. Btw perhaps add a card to the original video mentioning that the statement was false, it'd help clear up the misunderstanding

Yeah, nobody can blame Josh for missing this. This is the kind of crap you'd hire a lawyer to catch when trying to negotiate a contract with a less than reputable second party.

A new scale for measuring predatory games: On a scale of one to immortal, how predatory is it?

Wooow. I was wondering why there was a scale icon on only some of my gems. This was definitively deliberate to confuse players. I didn't even catch this. The overall game design is predatory enough, but this is egregious. If there is anything that gets them into legal trouble, it will be this.

Activision is making an excellent case for the blanket ban of all in-game purchases in all games.

The really messed up thing Is that if they simply made some gatcha cosmetics instead of completely gut their loot system for gambling They would legally and probably PR wise be in a substantial better position

I would be very happy if this was what got the US or Canadian government to start cracking down on this bullshit.

What's the case? "I offer you A. You can say no." Riiiiight, but somebody else doesn't want you to have A. "But I want A. I'ma get it." No, you can't. I've banned it. "Who the heck are you?"

@@petermgruhn -- No, this is clearly deceptive practices, which could very well already be in violation of the law. It's, "I offer Z but you THINK it's A." You purchase it and think, "Now I can do A!" and the game says, "Lol, get rekt, loser. All of those things are worthless. You need to buy THIS now." This is FRAUD, pure and simple.

If you don't see the deception involved, you're definitely not advised to buy the cheap Timex and Gucci bags from the weird guy on the bus.

This is freaking insane what they did. To think they were one of the best game companies in the world... To fall so damn low.

I'm equal parts shocked and impressed at how low Blizzard has sunk in this game. I don't know why I should be surprised, when they are removing loot boxes, just to get into countries that don't allow them and just changing the mechanic around. I'm impressed because, innovating the gatcha system in this way is probably the most innovative thing that blizzard has done in years. I thought the system was pretty much solved, but man Blizzard went in a little bit deeper.

It's insane how many tricks they kept hidden, I wouldn't be suprised if you were to find more later lol Thanks for exposing this!!

also i have to clarify this too, you get 2 eternal legendary crests a week also without orbs. one from doing your warband raid weekly, then you can buy an eternal crest for 1600 platinum, which is equal to 160 orbs. just gives f2p players the ability to buy one a week, second u can make one using fading embers, and getting 22 FA runes, then crafting the 22 FA into an eternal legendary crest. so everyone is technically getting 2 eternal crests a week free either way. since u get 300 platinum every day for doing 120bp in activities.

i had to say this, because therse thousands of players on the server im playing on, ive literately only spent 50 dollars in-game period. but grinding platinum ive earned 2 4/5 gems so far, and im WELL on my way to buying a 3rd. and they are rank 2, and i have a 2/5 jade rank 2, that ill buy a 4/5 (or get one as drop) and rank to 3 to upgrade to 4/5 as well. eternal crests 2 a week is actually more than u get f2p in REGULAR legendary crests, u have a chance at one a week, unless theres an event. then possibly 2. but ur guaranteed 2 a week f2p. NOT EXCLUSIVELY from the shop. and if 1000s of people get 2 a week, thats putting plenty of gems into the marketplace.

Excellent work Josh on this vid and the previous one. It brings to light alot of the issues plaguing the gaming industry.

The sheer amount of effort that has gone into obfuscating the mechanics of the loot in this game is astounding.

Yeah i always wonder if how much Budget they pour into this. This must take 30% of the dev budget or something like this.

the word you are looking for is either evil or morally bankrupt.

Before he went crazy, Jim Sterling coined the term for this type of racket: "confusopoly"

@@Archangelm127 he used to be funny and make banger videos, now he just a clown

I have played this game since its PC release. I'm a P27 Monk. Even more than the predatory loot system, I despise the Caps. At a certain point players are capped out of pretty much everything that could resort in game advancement without paying for crests. The game punishes its most active users. PVP is time locked. Clan and shadow actives are capped and time locked. The grind is the heart of Diablo. Diablo Immortal literally hurts the integrity of the Diablo franchise by nerfing the grind. Its like Activision/Blizzard board member are intent on killing their brand entirely.

So the eternal legendary crests are like the paid premium currencies in other gacha games but instead of giving you a one time 10 pull that guarantees you a high rank thing (that's completely optional to the game progression/base game), it's worse and a must buy for a better game progression I'm absolutely speechless

This is actually pretty common in games that hand out (some sort of) premium currency in addition to being buyable, but they aren't all as scummy about it. For example, in Fate/GRAND Order, you can use the premium currency, Saint Quartz (SQ), for all the same purposes, regardless of if it was earned in-game or bought in the cash shop, with one exception: periodically they run "premium" banners which let you outright select a Servant or get a guaranteed 5-star of your chosen class, and you can only roll on those gachas with paid SQ. The important differences are that you can absolutely play the game without spending money on it or rolling on a premium gacha, the game up-front tells you that only paid SQ works, and in situations where both SQ are usable, the game will spend unpaid SQ before it spends paid SQ. There's a lot of ~context~ involved here that arguably reduces the similarity between the games, aside from being mobage with the option to use a paid gacha, but I think it's important to mind that even in games that use a similar tactic, they aren't all nearly so scummy about it.

One thing you could add is detailing how FtP players, by design, are under social pressure to lighten their wallets, in light of being gatekeep'd from any meaningful gameplay based interaction with the society of players (in a MMO ARPG ..!), because either their character inevitably isn't strong enough to be accepted in the vast majority of guilds or they can't provide the necessary crests to offset their null chances to get the actually valuable loot and to "rectify" the drops' odds of the dungeon.

Wow, just wow. At first I thought this was the other way around, that the bought crests were giving bound gems. It usually is like this with things that are both earnable and buyable. For example in ESO you can both earn armor motifs by playing and outright buy them in the cash shop (well, not utright buy, you have to buy virtual currency first), and the ones from cash shop are bound to your account so you just can't go around selling items bought with real money. There's unofficial way of making gold that way by gifting other players in exchange for gold, but no official way to do that, and in case of motifs it's still cheaper to buy the ones that were earned by players through gameplay, it's lower in game gold cost. So here in Diablo it's just baffling that they did that the other way around. Way to go Blizzard. Are they trying to get as much money as they can before they turn over to Microsoft?

EA: We are easily the worst company in video game history. How could any company possibly compete? Blizzard: Hold my thinly-disguised gambling addiction simulator.

And I always thought Ubisoft will carry the torch after EA.

hot take:fifas always been cool. blizzard just fell off

Well FIFA was the first to introduce P2W in buy to play game...

I want to believe this is Activision's fault, when they took Blizzard, that happened!

Nice catch. I didn't even realize that. I gave up on this game when I discovered I could only buy 1 legendary crest a month from the hilt trader, while the store ones are completely uncapped, and the reforge stones you buy for hilts are far worse than the ones you get with orbs (real money). There's just no reason to play this game for "free". I knew there would be some shady monetization practices when they initially told us it would be released for mobile, but I didn't know it would be this bad. What a complete and utter disappointment.

Make sure to look at the importance on not being able to -select- the specific - Eternal Crest or Legendary gem. I will not call the Empowered Legendary crest that but just Eternal Crest to really differentiate the difference. You can not choose the crest!

I'm legitimately sickemed by how meticulous they made this monetisation. It's sole reason for existence is to con people out of money. I'm terrified of this kind of thing, because it's so obvious they want it to become the norm, and ftankly that would spell the death of video games as a medium in my eyes.

Blizzard should make a "Cup Head Prologue", because simply watching the insanity of these exploitative tactics sure does feel like *selling your soul* to the *_actual devil._*

i forgot the name of the item but it is used to awaken legendary items once your gems reached rank 10, that item is obtainable only through the cash shop and cost 1k orbs

Major changes to the whole system often come from one disastrous event. At this point I am just waiting to see how far this disaster can push the whole video game industry to a better direction.

It won't- they never learn

It wont. Who cares about metascore or low spenders/f2p QQ? The only thing that matters arre the whales and $$$. And as expected, Blizz is making tons of money with this shit game. It will only get worse and there is nothing we can do about it, since whales gonna whale either way, no matter how scummy or bad the game/company is. All hope is lost at this point....

Dunno money grap games on mobile are like default. Half youtube lives from RAID shadow legends.

@@nulian Even Kira TV promoted Raid. The money is too seductive to creators and companies alike.

You can craft unbound legendary gems from aprentice jewelcrafter with FA runes bought with fading embers witch drops in elder rift regardless if crests are inserted or not. But still your point on the diffrence between Leg crest & ET Leg crest where news to me!

Hi Josh just wanted to say that f2p can craft legendary gems, at the gems shop with Fa runes. There is an option to make unbound legendary gems from 1to5 stars. The Fa runes can only be exchanged at the Dust merchant (I belive, already uninstalled). Total you need almost 700 ambers ( the dust you get when you finish a rift)for the 28 Fa runes needed to craft a legendary gem. I did it and got a 2 star and sold it in the maket as well. Cheers keep doing your great job

It's 400 dust (22 runes) to gamble for unbound legendary gems. There is a cap on how often you can do it though.

I've also noticed that I have 2 stacks of keys for the Horadrim stashes in my inventory, so there's definitely a difference between bought ones and free ones since they don't count as the same item. Someone should look into that :D

Sad part is even after the anouncement which pretty much made evrybody doubt the game, they had the guts to make it this predatory and even with that they knew they were doing something wrong so they made it so it was hard to notice for people… Blizzard really nailed disappointing the diablo community this time I literally just downloaded the game, haven’t even gotten to level 50 but now I am doubting I even want to lol

Since you cannot select what kind of legendary crest to use for the rift run, what happens to the loot if there is a mix of both?

Everyday we discover "surprise mechanics" hidden inside this "game".

Just how deep does this rabbit hole go?

@@trucid2 is there even a end to it ?

@@trucid2 They can update it.

"Surprise Mechanic"?.... no that's the wrong phrase here its a fn "Hidden Fee/Surcharge"

@@RedPhisher175 I know but that is what EA said when they were inside the tribunal in front of the judge.

Really leaning into the gacha here. Most Japanese games makes a difference between "(Paid) Crystals" (or whatever in-game currency) and "(Free) Crystals". Often, reruns or gachas with better percentages are locked to "Paid Crystals". Also, month passes that reward daily Crystals login bonuses are considered free, even though you paid for them.

That is very different; only a couple of banners will do paid only content, and will tell you up-front about the matter for the most part.

That actually tells you if it's paid or not, the rift crest screen talks about nothing regarding regular and eternal unless you take a close look in the cash shop.

even gacha games and "normal" predatory games make that distinction obvious - the opposite of this game. You'll have something like gold as a "paid" currency available to free players and diamonds you only obtain through purchases with real money. Not a single game I've seen has had the balls to make those currencies interchangeable and virtually identical just to scam players.

Also, no gacha game will ever limit their free 10-pull currency (crystals, gems...etc.) to 2 pulls PER MONTH, which is how many free legendary crests a f2p player can earn in Immortal Even the stingiest of gacha games usually allow players to earn 1-2 free pulls worth of gems per day, so they can earn a 10-pull every 5-7 days of play.

Also, I've never played a gacha that locks reruns to just Paid Crystals When a banner/pull is locked to only Paid Crystals, just having a better percentage is not enough. It usually has to guarantee legendary/5-star drops because that's the bare minimum players expect.

The whole bound item mechanic that Blizzard started implementing in WoW as a "security" feature I believe was really added to prevent players from making an economy themselves and prevent them from selling items for money that blizzard wouldn't get a cut of.

That's why they started selling gold. There once was a very lucrative secondary market for gold farmers, and Blizzard finally decided they were losing too much money to the bots.

When you think that, if the idea of designing the game was a pie, 90% of that pie went into this, all of this, imagine if they only spent 5% on this, how well the game would've been...

I'm pretty sure they did this to prevent players from creating multiple accounts and farming/botting the "easy" crests for free over and over again. You could then funnel the progress into a single main account. Thanks for shining a light on this monstrosity, it deserves every ounce of venom.

If it was only for bot resistance, then they would have made it a clearly different icon and name. (For example, in MMORPGs, you can clearly see [Character Bound], [Soulbound], [Account-bound] directly in the user interface, usually right below the title of the item. Other MMORPGs put a red background versus black background, so even someone who is colour-blind would see there is a difference.) It's not a mistake or laziness either, because if they were just being lazy, they could have made the "Eternal" and the non-eternal version use the exact same graphic rather than a slight difference to deflect lawsuits.

I never played the game, but it's so fascinating to observe these mechanics of greed being implemented through a platform so deliberately and on purpose. I salute you blizzard 👏 👏 👏

Funny that gamers throw the term freed at devs/publishers but never on themsleves when they buy second hand. Newsflash, everybody tried to get more value and money as they can

"The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal" is a great series so far and I can't wait for episode 3!

Given what's in the first two, I'm kind of terrified as to what kind of psychological bs would be required to make a part 3

Diablo Immoral

@@tylorhobbs8920 they added an opioid peripheral mandatory to login

@@aelix56 they will claim it will enhance the experience by making it more vivid

I've seen Asmogold react to this. Came here to watch the original, give a like and a comment for the algoryhtms. Great job.

Blizzard is getting really good at making games for their shareholders.

I've now watched this video 3 times and I'm still equally as rattled by this as the first time. It's insane. Honestly, it's borderline evil. Just that extra little twist of the knife to maximize profits. It is deeply depressing that despite all of this, Blizzard was right. They're making money hand-over-fist and all signs point to them continuing to for quite some time. The moral is: no matter how anti-player your game is as long as your gameplay loop is addictive enough and your monetization system is cunning enough, you will succeed.

Well "as long as your gameplay loop is addictive and your monetization system is cunning enough" and you're working with an established IP that makes the game launch an event, forces streamer to engage with the game which in turns encourages viewers to try it, and as the game is multiplayer it encourages them to invite their friends to grind with them... and there you go. That design wouldn't have worked with an unknown IP or a game that doesn't have a strong launch through marketing, because nobody would have picked up the game without peer pressure. And of course the peer pressure only works cause of how easy it is to "just try". It's really insidious.

@@Laezar1 Well... yeah. I wasn't excluding other things you need to be a successful mobile game or, really any from of consumable media, even like, books. But the IP doesn't need to be established, Clash of clans, G impact, Raid: Shadow Legend, hell, Candy Crush all went on to be wildly successful. But that's kind of besides the point isn't it? The gameplay is psychologically addictive and the attempts to get people to pay are largely predatory and, in many places, next-to unregulated. But yeah, Blizzard obviously had advantages.

@@kyletrout3828 I was adding to what you were saying, like, they're able to go all out with the abusive tactics because they know they will have the playerbase and media visibility by default. I'm just mostly shocked by how cynical they are by just using the trust they built to be even more blatant with their trick without risking not having the playerbase to support their plan.

Actually, there is another way of obtaining unbound (sellable) legendary gems that is accessible to free-to-play players, but it further contributes to the psychological manipulation that the game does. I'm talking of course about the gem crafting. When you complete the elder rift, you get fading embers, which you can use to purchase "FA" runes at 18 embers each. You need 22 Fa runes, which is 396 total, to craft the "1,2, or a 5 star gem" recipe at the Jewelers'. I am quite certain this crafting recipe has the same odds as one legendary crest, which means roughly 70% chance of 1-star gem, 26% of 2-star gem, and 4% of a 5-star gem. All of them unbound Now this is worse than you think, because the amount of embers you can get per week is hard-capped at 320 embers. Which means you can roughly craft this recipe twice every three weeks, so that is 15 weeks of relentless rift grinding to effectively roll the same odds as someone doing a single elder rift with 10 legendary crests which takes about 3 or 4 minutes. So basically the game tells you to pay the 25$ in a single rift to save yourself 15 weeks worth of trouble.

It is indeed predatory, but we need to clarify something: you can also sell the gems you craft from 1-star random, 2-star random and 5-star random with ati and fa runes you farm from rifts opened with rare crests. Mind you, ONLY the random crafts, not the crafts that specify which gem you are crafting.

You apologized at the end of the video, however, there's nothing to apologize for. First of all, this is pretty difficult to notice, so good job on doing just that. Of course, I completely agree that this is totally designed this way and it is not just coincidence, and Activision are actually the ones who should apologize for this incredibly immoral way of trying to squeeze people out of their money. I truly hope, that Microsoft will do things better, because I personally don't think that it could get any worse than what Activision are doing at the moment.

Yeah no shit right? I've hit early Paragon levels, and I've been consuming a lot of reviews and media in tandem with my playing, and this is the first time I've heard of this.

Things always ALWAYS get worse, I don't know why people always keep hope on these companies because at the end of the day all of them are exactly the same... Companies who want your money

Don't count on it. Microsoft gets off at doing shady shit almost as much as ActiBlizz. Those two companies go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I an enjoying these videos and incredibly grateful to the work put in to give us the info, but I think my favorite part of watching the original video and this addition is getting a Diablo Immortal advertisement when I both open them AND at the end of each video....lol

Hello Josh, I am an avid watcher if not directly by your channel, through Asmongold's stream. I am a long time player of oldschool runescape and runescape 2 prior to runescape 3 launch. Since the launch of Oldschool Runescape I have not purchased any memebrship and have levelled many accounts for different purposes and goals. I've found that the free to play model, whilst grindy and less rewarding and less content filled, was still very very enjoyable, especially for my longest term account which I plan to max all free to play skills, which people find about as difficult as maxing a paid account with the additional skills due to the far less options available for gathering experience and having generally much lower rates for exp in free to play options. However I feel that runescape crusaders have a titanium copium mask in that we claim our way to play our account. We choose our goals. And sure, I could afford membership both in game and with real currency, but I also feel like there's a value to the challenge. What is a game if it boils down simply to "how efficient am I being?" At that point you're so competitive its likely you dont enjoy the game that much at all. I'd happily take my time playing a grindy game to achieve a personal goal rather than hop on the flavor of the month bandwagon game that has the most twitch viewership because ludwig or whoever mentioned it. Ever since hearing diablo 3 player's experience that migrated to PoE, I lost faith for Blizzard, way before the scandal. Diablo Immortal is what I hope to be the nail in the coffin. I hope the lead designers leave and start a new team and work within their lore and core game fundamentals to make Diablo 4 what players wanted, a Diablo with enough potential to rival the release of PoE 2, with deep league systems. I think the way Jagex handled their pay to win model is ok short of the bond system being tradable. They dont have much content for f2p but theres still thousands of hours to grind if players really want to. The way Diablo Immortal has implemented it is an insult to the video game industry. I actually hope money whales are publicly shamed into quitting the game.

This is just MIND NUMBINGLY predatory with how they go out of their way to obfuscate this.

I've never played the game never will. Also Josh (love your videos btw) .. I'm sure you've seen WolfHeart's Video on "the Very Dark Truth about the gaming industry" as he really digs into the mechanics companies are using. These DISGUSTING mechanics are ruining the gaming industry. I hope that more indie companies will start that create games that are not filled with hidden and manipulative mechanics solely designed to take players money.

Damn, this new Diablo looks so cool. So true to the legacy of the franchise... Unfortunately I don't have a phone though, so I will have to pass on this one, BUT if I did have a phone I would seriously consider postponing building my second country house so I could max out a few characters; for real.

Well said, i wageslaved the last years away to build up a small saving for me and potential future family. Might download Diablo Immoral instead :>

Blizzard has reached levels of unholy that even Diablo would be jealous of.

Bobby Kotick is the biggest demon.

@@CrazynToughKiwi Bobby kotick while being annoying is far from only one to blame, the whole upper management that work on diablo should have prevented this

In Diablo 1-3, we looted monsters. In Diablo Immortal, we get looted

@@wz3953 That's far too good of a comment to be hidden as a reply.

"Let's get all the money back that we've lost in law suits and SL and other failed products"

There is straight up no excuse for this! I’m going to college for game design and development in august, it makes me sick to think I’ll be sharing an industry with people like this!

you're going to part of the problem if you don't do something else with that degree. News flash no one expects to go into the gaming industry to make the next predatory game model. It happens due to debt (from going to college) and getting into a job and being told "this is what you're doing, get over it or there's the door." Either they buckle down and do it, or they lose an opportunity that very well may be their only chance at working in "AAA" studio. Even if said person later becomes a project lead, the company owners (or publishers) will force monetization into their dream project. Either wise up and find a new career path, or get over the fact there's a 90+% chance your work will be used to make a product to do crap like this to children and the ignorant. All of that isnt touching the can of worms that is the work environment of "AAA" Devs either. I learned not long into my high school days I didnt want to work in an industry that's full of immoral garbage in charge of it. To be clear, I'm not a young kid any more, I'm nearing thirty. The gaming industry stopped being one of heart and soul when games went mainstream, I'd say around 2007-2010 or so. Even before then it was bad, just not this bad or perhaps it was and the population didn't have the internet to easily share how bad it was. Just look at Pokemon Red and Blue and their anti consumer practices with the whole two versions of the same game just slightly different. Edit: fixed "very may well be" to "very well may be" xD and to be clear "90+% chance" is a figure pulled out of my ass, it is a staggeringly high number nonetheless.

@@christianjones7012 I’m well aware sir, and I’m not planning to get a job at a AAA studio, the 3 paragraph lecture is not necessary, as it will not dissuade me from pursuing game design as a career.

@@lordthrash7156 I hate to rain on your parade, but if you're thinking about starting up your own studio or going to work for an indie developer, realize that the vast majority of them scrape by from game to game. Very very few actually manage to establish themselves long term, and most shut down within a few years of starting up. Even if you manage to find one that's stable, the pay isn't going to be glamorous for the amount of work you're expected to put in. The developers of Squad were regularly pulling 100 hour work weeks prior to it leaving early access.

For those who don't know, there is a team who focus on the gameplay... and clearly their focus was not on the fun of gameplay but the monetary aspect. We are talking about Blizzard paying a group of designers for several months/year to keep coming up with the most greedy ways to make people pay the most amount... This was done from the start... before developers starting coding the game. Their customers are paying to have fun progressing in a pay to win game.

I deleted this game after 3 or 4 days of play time, but you can get unbound ones from that jewelry area. You just gotta grind out that rift thing and buy the runes to then purchase the legendary gem at random. Don't remember the exact name of all the stuff, so this may not even help clarify anything at all. But I 100% know you can get unbound gems to sell in the marketplace, because I had 1 and didn't put any money into this game.

I would guess that this is done to force sunk cost because with a lot of mobile games the most efficient way of spending money is to content packs, especially daily ones. They lock you in for some set amount of time only to find out that you can't sell it on the marketplace. But you're already too deep and invested both in time and in dollar, coming to the realization that your loot drops are essentially worthless a day late and a dollar (probably at least 30) short.

These videos were extremely well made. Sadly, I enjoyed them thoroughly lol

"I'm sorry I didn't spot it in the original video" don't be sorry Josh, as you described it's literally designed to be missed and confusing, this shit is honestly evil, confusion as a money making tactic is so anti-consumer it's disgusting.

I like videos like these. They make me think "I might have problems, but hey, at least I'm not a Diablo fan."

We have to take a collective stand, please realise as long as there is big money in these predatory gacha loot box and pay to win games they will become the norm and more people will be exploited.

I saw the difference in naming of the two crests and was wondering what the difference between the two was. Now I know.