Addendum: Legendary Crests are even worse, update video here: https://youtu.be/YF--ytWn8mU

Josh, an FYI - D:I is NOT banned in the Netherlands and probably wouldn’t be. If you want an explanation for that, I can mail you about it. Just let me know. As for Belgium - it isn’t there but would be. The game just isn’t available in both countries.

@Ben Nezerol i'd literally pay money to have it banned in my country

Let's just hope that your work will contribute to highlight predatory design practices of the mobile gaming industry, and make the laws tighten even more in the future.

60$ game purchase + 15$ monthly sub with all content/gear/items/upgrades accessible via grinding would've made this game historic. Considering there's, correct me if I'm wrong, 30 million active players? That would translate to 1.8 BILLION, not counting the revenue from the monthly subs, which is 300 times more money than they've made already...Using the 6 million figure you quoted in the video.

People defending Diablo Immortal because the gameplay is solid are like fish defending the fishing hook because the bait is tasty.

The gameplay IS solid. I just wish Blizzard would've taken the PoE approach for mtx then, most likely, people would focus on the crap PC port for DI

This is a perfect analogy for that

@Francisco Brisolla de Oliveira They don't want PoE money, they want FIFA money

I don't hear anyone defending the monetization, no one "wants" it. People are just wanting to play the game and not have the politics of monetization brought into every conversation about the game. If nothing is physically being done to stop monetization then there is a point when complaining and being outraged online gets annoying for those just wanting to chill out and play a game they are enjoying.

The gameplay is good. The monetization system is bad because it doesn't give you anything very good over a f2p player : - Legendary gems doesn't give a huge powerlevel increase (about 5% increase for people spending under 200$) - Legendary gems doesn't have visual "qualities" : compare one little shiny rock to actual characters with a whole "design" - The "icebreaker" is lame : it gives a very small amount of market currency (can't buy anything) and a shit cosmetic, so the icebreaker effect is about giving the idea to the player that it's actually not worth to spend money - One time packs : are lame too and doesn't give anything good too - Whales can be wrecked even if you are a f2p player : it's "bad" because whales don't want to deal with weakness, they just want to roll over everyone. Especially in PvP mode in a mobile game. This game is actually one of the most f2p friendly mobile game on the market for all those reasons. And I would add that complaining about not being "competitive" in a mobile game, and more precisely in mobile PvP game mode... is dumb by design. If you want to feel "competitive", you don't want to be on a mobile game firstly.

"If you've never played a Diablo game, here's a basic rundown: Demons exist, and you'd really rather they didn't. You can realize your dream of a demon-free world through the power of friendship and incredible violence." Quite possibly the best line I've heard from a video essay yet. Beautiful.

Its an awful breakdown. Sounds more like DOOM than Diablo.

@Type 36 Hachimoto DOOM and Diablo are basically non-identical twin brothers

@Type 36 Hachimoto Where is friendship involved in doom?

@Phlumpers Daisy? You also had a good ai aide and a dude with with a lot of courage helping Doomguy.....

Vega

When I heard the ‘per account’ bombshell, my jaw dropped and it made me realise They spent the majority of design,thought, energy, time and money… on how best to con players out of more money. It’s almost commendable…almost

you mean per character?

@DreamersNights Diablo 4 is a separate game, I think. At the very least the art style is different, but uh... I don't trust Blizzard.

@DreamersNights Yes.

To be fair, JSH's favorite game (Runescape) does the exact same thing, and as someone with a main and ironman who has to pay twice for membership, it's kind of annoying. That certainly doesn't make the whole thing less predatory though.

@Damaniel3 That's a bit of apples and oranges, though. Runescape isn't a class based system like Diablo.

I have to admit I did get a moment's enjoyment out of Diablo Immortal - when I went to install it to see what the gameplay was like, and realised my Note 10+ wasn't supported. It was the punchline to "Do you not have phones" that was years in the making, and I truly appreciated it.

That's amazing lmao

Whaaaat lmfao

I wanted to try Diablo Immortal out but my Ipad is an older 32gb model. The OS and current minimal files on it took up just enough space that the game was not able to be installed

Goddamn, even your phone was disgusted by these microtransactions

bro just barely dodged a bullet...well played

15:02 *reading chat* JSH: no one is against the game making money, it's the fact it's so predatory OreoMuffin: technically everything is predatory Truly the greatest philosopher of our time

Just one of those people thinking they're being smart. xD

@The 13th Ghost Bunny everyone thinks they are smart

Charity Organizations: Are we the bad guys too? Point being: dollar store puddle deep wisdom from someone probably paying a lot for a shitty game.

@The 13th Ghost Bunny Technically all people think they're smart - OreoMuffin, probably

Golden Age of Gaming: "How can we maximize fun in our game? How can we push technology and use it to innovate creative game design?" Modern Gaming: "How can we use a minimum viable product to psychologically influence the masses to spend as much money as possible and keep them psychologically hooked as long as possible?"

Forgot a bit on that last one. "How can we do all that AND then still hold good faith when the second it is not raking in money, we drop the service so people, even those that might have liked it or actually put money into can't use the thing they purchased."

We ARE in the golden age of gaming, you just point at the worst parts of modern gaming and ignore that 99% of everything sucked back in the day. There were 4000 ps2 games, make that 99.9% of games being bad. Oh, and no patches to fix said games. Or returns.

​@Delancey if this is the golden age, then I shiver at the idea of what it'll become. Also, games back then weren't nearly as broken on release as they are today

​@therealslimGordon An awful lot of them were. It's just that they stayed broken and were thus forgotten, never to resurface - except perhaps on the Angry Video Game Nerd show. Also, don't forget the classic arcade quarter-munchers and how their legacy affected early console gaming. Monetization over gameplay is nothing new.

"minimum viable product"? scrap that, we are making a minimum viable Service, since products can only be sold once while service is virtually an endless money sink

When TakeTwo purchased Zynga, this game's monetization system was what I feared they'd shove into a future GTA title as it feels like all this stemmed from when Activision Blizzard bought King. You buy a mobile game company and suddenly everything has to make that mobile game money...

it's him! hi!

I remember in 2018 there was a leaked investor call between Activision, Blizzard, KING, Square Enix, and a few other major game companies. They talked about quarters earning and KING had earned five times the amount Call of Duty and World of Warcraft had earned in a year in just one quarter. It's just a shame. This was of course, before the Blizzard Activision merger, and before KING was bought out. It's just shameless and stems not from "Horse Armor" as some streamers might be saying, but rather from KING, developers of Candy Crush, Soda Crush, and other similar mobile games that essentially created the "pay to progress faster and easier" methodology. Their version was a bit more simple and less directly "fuck you pay me", as it was games targeted mostly towards facebook moms. A sad story.

@Dillon Meyer funny you mention that - Jim Sterling had a video a few years back about “the most influential game of the decade”…and the title went to Clash of Clans because CEOs couldn’t stop talking about how the game was fucking monetized.

@Dillon Meyer I think you missed his point, yes mobile games themselfes do make more money than pc games (which is kind of obvious since countries like china and india have massive mobile player bases) but being a gaming company and buying up a mobile gaming company doesn't (or shouldn't) be a reason to put this business model in all of you other products. My 2 cents are that we need to learn to let go of franchises. Diablo 2 was THE game of my childhood, but after I've heard it's coming to mobile and it's controlled by a chinese mobile games company I knew that it's just the same mobile game a third of china plays on their phones, just reskinned with the Diablo franchise. People attach themselfes to franchises like they are their moms, I don't get it. We've learned this lesson way too many times for this kind of thinking to be excused. Diablo Immortal is just not a Diablo game, but Diablo fans see it as one and are upset that it's not up to their standarts. Stop loving franchises, start loving games people

Impossibile

Funnily enough, as someone who struggles with gambling, whenever I get the itch to play rewatching this video helps me fight off the urge lol

Stop letting them steal your money

​@Fiery Fire it's not that easy

Ey, take care yourself and keep fighting. Hope you'll be able to work past your addictions so games like these won't take advantage of you.

Stay strong champion

Diablo Immortal: Making people disgusted with gambling since 2022

My defense mechanism against intrusive games such as this is being broke 💀

In case you don't check his other video about this out: The servers restrict your exp level. If you are above the server level, the displayed exp you earn is not what you actually earn.. the higher the level you are, the greater the difference you are from the meta level of the server, the less exp you actually earn, down to basically zero.. unless you're doing rifts that are opened with legendary crests. Also orange drops go to zero after a certain number of runs unless it's legendary rifts opened with those crests.

"none of us wake up expecting to get choked by a death mage but sometimes you get lucky and it happens" 12:04

You probably can drastically increase the chance of it happening by spending in-game currenc bought with real money

@Blabla Blubb Nah I can't afford the charisma debuff

Josh gets me

I remember how decadent I felt back in the day when I bought my very first in-game item ever: Trang Oul's scales, the last piece I needed for my full Trang's set in D2. I was almost embarrassed to admit it to my friends. Oh how far we have come :/

I've spent 100s if not 1000s on free korean mmos on the 2000s. The shame isn't wearing off either!

I really wish predatory games didn’t make so much money. It’s so frustrating to see these incredibly abusive systems financially encouraged by their victims. Thanks for the thorough breakdown of this insidious and reprehensible design.

that's WHY they make money unfortunately. These systems are well designed explicitly for this purpose.

It's predatory because there is prey, a lot of it. And it's bound to catch some big game.

Probably the most shocking thing in this video isnt anything about monetization or Diablo, its that Josh put his whole ass name as his character name and he WASNT swarmed by viewers. Honestly pretty impressive.

Diablo 3 was my first ever computer game, my grandma introduced me to it (and power leveled me every single season). Sucks that blizzard is doing stuff like this with their monitization.

I know this is old but you have a really cool grandma

@QBxRicky No kidding. I didn't know one of my grandmothers and the other was truly hate incarnate. The idea of a grandmother power leveling me in d3 gives me all kinds of strange feelings.

Cool grandma, mine used to keep me shackled to a radiator in the basement. I didn’t even see sunshine until I was 17 and had killed her with a lead pipe lol.

When I heard you say, "per character", I paused the video and laughed hysterically for five minutes. Thank you so much for making this video and waking people the fuck up. These people need to be in jail and Blizzard needs to be shut down as a company.

The way you break down each mechanic and microtransaction is really impressive, you are great at explaining them as well. 👍👍

I remember bingeing Diablo III and consequently becoming interested in Diablo Immortal. I live under a rock, so I missed ALL of the controversy surrounding it beforehand (but started becoming exposed to it as I was playing). But even before I saw that controversy, it was... *very* obvious just how hard they were pushing microtransactions. You just cleared your first dungeon, congrats! Would you like to buy more dungeon-related loot? You just cleared your second dungeon, congrats! Would you like to buy more dungeon-related loot? You learned about rifts! But if you want anything good within a reasonable amount of time, you need better and more crests. Would you like to buy loads and loads of crests for lots of money? Do you want these cool cosmetics? Do you want to pay for a monthly subscription? Better gear? To get stronger? Just getting beaten over the head with offers and deals and FOMO, it was exhausting!

I never understood why you people enjoyed Diablo. The gameplay and story does not look interesting compared to Baldur's Gate 3 which is the superior Roleplaying game. Unlike Blizzard, Larian Studios does not include predatory monetization schemes into their games.

@Flare Once upon a time, Blizzard was passionate about making games and not sucking their fans dry of money, and the older Diablo games were great fun and didn't beat you in the streets with microtransactions. They're fun to a lot of people, myself included, because loot pinatas make goblin brain go brrr (I'm not saying BG3 is bad; in fact, I want to play it, but I currently cannot afford it). Activision-Blizzard now uses the love all these fans have of these properties to keep them hooked and perhaps hoping that one day, things will return to being better.

I am a lawyer in Copenhagen, Denmark, specialising in consumer rights laws (amongst other things). That loot box loophole you describe from about 29:00 on is absolutely insane. As you correctly state, it is technically legal, however it is very obviously a loophole (at least under most EU consumer rights legislation). Blizzard abusing such a loophole in legislation meant to protect a weak party (the consumer) is a stain on the gaming business, and i am very saddened that Blizzard would stoop so low. I was actually considering playing this game, but now i would sooner quit gaming, than support this kind of tendency. Furthermore, i am thoroughly convinced that this loophole will, at some point in the near future, be patched in EU legislation. Most other jurisdisctions (Chinese, American etc) generally provide much weaker consumer rights protection, and so i believe they will be able to continue this distasteful tendency there. I am actually baffled, and i am very pleased that you are shedding some much needed light on this.

Thanks for shedding some light on things from a legality point of view. I've been curious as to what lawyers think about stuff like this. All the little intricacies and loopholes, etc.

Living in America provides some unique privileges in the value of our dollar but also huge crisis' in the values of our industries, it's tragic it has come to this. I hope the EU can close this gap soon, because my only hope for my countryman is they will see Josh's video.

Are you truly baffled though? You do realize how much money gamers spend on twitch right? The predatory tactics with bits, gifted subs, text to speech and everything else? Why is it okay for twitch to prey on depressed gamers but its not okay for the people actually making games to do it? I dont like this monetization system either but it doesnt surprise me at all. You have to realize how much money these kids are wasting on NFTs, twitch subs, twitch bits, donations that are taxed at 40% rate and the list just keeps going. If its fine for kids to spend their lunch money to get see girls on twitch lick a microphone or bend over to write their name on a whiteboard then what blizzard is doing 100% within the lines of what is " moral " nowdays.

This game is designed by NetEase, I believed Blizzard doesn’t have much input for this game for its design or gameplay, however I could be wrong. NetEase is a horrible company for everyone except share holders. Their game looks attractive with OK graphics and game mechanics but they want your wallet, they want it bad, they want it now. NetEase has a history of worker abuses, the most famous being one in 2019. The company adopted 995 work schedule, aka work from 9am to 9pm 5 days a week. No pay raise, no benefit nothing. Simply force people to accept 60 hour work week or get fired. which is actually against Chinese labor law but the Chinese Capitalists Party doesn’t gives a shit only communist would care labor rights. Other reason they can get away is other Chinese firms adopted 72 hour or longer work week. This is what neoliberalism does and want, it’s just sad the world 2 largest economy are ran by neoliberals.

@Roy Huang blizzard is long dead, a rotting corpse of what it once was. xD

I always come back to watch this video because it's such a thorough and well thought out deconstruction of this disgustingly monetized mess well done Josh you have fast become one of my favourite youtubers keep up the awesome content👍👏

39:12 Incredible writing. You dropped the beat 39 minutes in, and what a payoff. I thought I was sufficiently horrified at this game, but that last single fact put it all in hellish perspective.

You know this "game" was designed for the objective of draining as mush money from people as possible, when they started to find loopholes and excuses for the loot-boxes. Its kind of genius if you think about it.

We don't live in a world where corporations make what customers want. We live in a crony corporatist world where the whole games industry largely works together to force players into microtransaction and subscription models to drain us of our money.

The upside with games at least is they have a low barrier to entry. Make a game and Steam/Google/Apple will distribute it for you without an upfront cost. There are even mobile games that don't just exist to predate on their players.

Not "the whole games industry". There are still plenty of good games where that you can just buy for one price.

Thank you for your very detailed, balanced and - most or all - entertaining analysis of this game! Your videos are as excellent as ever! I know I'm quite late to the party, but predatory monetication strategies haven't ceased over the last year, so I think it's fine, if I add my incoheren't ramblings to this video: I have played gacha games for quite some time now, and even if I have never dedicated myself to one single game for more than 8 months, I think I can talk confidently about them due to the variety of gacha games I played. I am not the type to easily spend money and fortunately I was able to stick to my guns and never throw cash at something without the GUARANTEE of receiving something I want. Nevertheless, I am part of the problem and one of the many reasons why predatory monetication strategies have spread over to classic PC/Console gaming, which is a trend I very much despise, since I fear the pending doom of one of my favorite pastimes. Some of you might call me a hypocrite for this, and maybe you're right. However, I always try to discriminate between the monetication system and the game itself. If you'd ask me whether or not I like Fate/GO, Arknights and Girl's Frontline, I'd never say: "Yes, of course. They're great." What you'll hear me say instead will be along the lines of: "Yes, they are great, if not for the fact that they are gacha games." If I had the choice, I'd always wish for these games not to include gacha mechanics, but unfortunately they make more money this way. That doesn't mean on the other hand, that I don't have a lot of fun with these games, quite the opposite. They are fun to me and I have to respect the effort that went into them from all the talented artists, voice actors, musicians, writers and game designers. I want to like these games and I want to continue having fun with them. That doesn't mean though, that I have to support their business models as well. In the same sentence I can praise a game's art direction and lament its predatory nature. I n the end, your feelings about a game do NOT need to fall into a black and white scheme. They most likely are a complicated thing and therefore should be expressed as such, as expertly presented by Josh Strife Hayes at the beginning and end of this video. And I also think, that this is an attitude more people - and especially mobile players - should have towards the games they like (without trying to sound like a role model, which I'm not). You don't have to support every aspect of a game that you like. More often than not, it is better to state your criticisms so that the game you enjoy will continue to grow and improve in the future. As a final side note: I haven't actually played Diablo Immortal myself, but from what Josh Strife Hayes has accumulated in this video, I can make the educated guess that, yes, Diablo Immortal seems to be more predatory than current mainstream gacha games like Genshin Impact. The frightening part about it is however, to think, that the systems established in Diablo Immortal might become the new norm for videogames in general (e.g. the horse armour DLC in oblivion despite the backlash at the time being a rather tame and harmless business practice today). In any case: I apologize for my incoherent thoughts and thank you, if you've read this far.

I don't give a flying fuck how enjoyable this game might be. This is unacceptable. As you point out, accepting this is encouraging the industry to make such practices standard.

You can play the game WITHOUT encouraging these practices. Don't boycott the game when that's not the issue

@ Jonas Eriksson Not really. It’s setup almost exactly like a slot machine where you get rewarded for putting money in.

@Clyde Cash Sure, so don't let the actual game creators who put their heart and soul into designing its art, sounds, and more just because you don't like what the corporate people do. By boycotting, you're not just hurting the executives who made this monetized, but the people at the bottom who actually made the game. If you're going to take down the monetization, start from the top and don't make the creatives in the crossfire.

Hey, it's the keyboard guy.

This started autoplaying while I’m at work and the whole “no one wants you to stop having fun, they want the companies to be held accountable for garbage” thing feels so very relevant with the Pokemon violet/scarlet debacle.

At least pokemon isn't trying to drain us of all of our money with pay to win microtransactions, just making lots of games! But as a pokemon fan who was one of the few people excited to play violet. The quality of the game was dissapointing and one of the reasons I have a hard time picking it up after beating it. So much minimal effort was being put on all fronts it really discouraged any hope I had for the game.

Pokemon is not even remotely comparable to this shit lol. They're not trying to siphon money out of you or manipulate you, no one spent 100k+ dollars to get a shiny miraidon and did not get it. On the other side, no one sent death threats to people who didn't see a problem with this game ! Can't say the same for pokemon fans !

I think what frustrates me about these extreme cases of monestisation is us players are both the cause and also the only cure for this problem. Luckily for me I'm only susceptible to cosmetic shops, not pay to win shops. The true endgame of any MMO or online game.

The depth of the manipulative design, how they're optimizing the methods to subvert our natural cognitive processes to prompt payment, is staggering. This direction is to treat humans as a platform to create a pure consumer, to optimize the extraction of money from. Thank you for the video. It's a worthwhile checkpoint into the state of the gaming culture at this moment.

This video is exactly what I was looking for. A long, amazingly done, detailed deep dive on this game's monetization issues. It's the first vid I've watched from you and I'm already subbed. Congrats for the great content.

Thank you for making this review, I feel like I understand the predatory loop of pay to win games a bit better. I'm amazed and frustrated by how insidious it can get, and that those are resources spent making the game actively worse for players.

It breaks my heart that developers are starting to refer to single player console masterpieces without micro transactions like Elden Ring as “legacy games”

Wait who refered to elden ring as a legacy game, I wish to know which publisher/developer did so I can avoid their games entirely

Well, they are not wrong, fully fledged video games are a lost art that nowadays seems to only be sustained via selfless crowdfunding methods Good for games with a lot of creative lead behind them Bad for games focused around simulations God I just wanted another fun and compelling racing game just like ps2 and ps3 generations Now it's all oversaturated hyper casual hyper crunched pieces of dogshit, and when they aren't that, well then they are locked behind different platforms all together

That's the strategy: Gas light the average customer into believing games without monetization are "outdated", and they'll eventually start buying into this narrative. In other words, repeat a lie enough times and some people will begin believing it.

Only in EA

Sadly they pretty much are. The entire industry is moving towards microtransction driven live services and mobile games. As great of a game as Elden Ring is, the amount of money it's made isn't even 1% of what Diablo Immortal made in less than a month. Thing is, developers like From Software and Platinum Games aren't all that profitable. They pretty much scrape by from game to game. They'll eventually be forced to adopt this business model to stay afloat or get bought out by a larger company.

8:09 goddam Man, that's a way to sum up 25 years of a franchise, freakin' accurate too! Also I'm a big Diablo fan, and enjoyed immortal quite a bit, but gotta agree with most of what you said, specially when there are people out there with legitimate mental health issues and gambling addiction. Great video.

As someone who's neck-deep in multiple gacha games, there's a lot when it comes to mobile game payment models that I am more willing to put up with than other people. Even so, I have to agree that this game seems to go way beyond what I've seen in the games I play. I'm not necessarily a fan of Diablo so I don't have any real stake in the matter, but I am one who believes in comeback stories and I do hope that the developers listen and handle their monetization strategy in a way that doesn't prey on unsuspecting players.

It's so nice that Blizzard with all of its expertise, funds, brand status used all of these things to implement world leading predatory practices in the industry, an evolution from just merely making great products for its fans.

Great review! I can’t believe how scummy the developers are knowing that it’s pretty much an empty wallet that needs to be filled. I miss the good old days of buying a game and getting it all unlocked- ingame!

I know that it was probably not intended,but i love how all the different currencies appear in the video.They start off at the corners and the top part of the screen,in a non intrusive way,but then they start to clutter the screen more and more,to the point where you cant even see the gameplay in the background.It’s basically a representation of the effect the insane amount of different currencies have in game

The crowd booed when it was revealed that D:I was a mobile game. The response of "what, you guy's don't have phones?" was entirely missing the reason people were unhappy. We knew EXACTLY how this game was going to turn out. As an aside, we need to be careful that this isn't a cynical push to shift the overton window surrounding mobile monetisation. They may have fully expected the blowback, to then concede on monetisation systems they knew wouldn't sit well, so the players will say "oh it's not as bad as it was" when in actuality it's still much worse than other comparable titles.

I'm shocked, shocked I say, that their reaction to the backlash so far would be an equally tone deaf, "What? You guys don't have jobs?"

That question alone from the exec is exactly why this decision executed every goodwill and humility they will ever have.

Oh, I'm certain they know why people were unhappy. I just don't think they care. The mobile monetization model (I won't even call it "gaming") is too lucrative, and they want to move towards it.

The thing is they don't give a fuck how badly the crowd reacts because at the end of the day Diablo Immortal is incredibly successfull.

@Karco At the severe cost of reputation and potential legal trouble.

this is kind of infuriating tbh, but also its nice to have these techniques explained to me like i'm a 3rd grader. theres some really simple shit i've fallen for thinking i was being all smart about it. thank you for this video

The biggest tragedy is that there'll probably never going to be this fun, fairly priced game available for us. The predatory monetisation destroyed any possibility of this game, perhaps this series, to ever be as good as it's supposed to.

Thank you for this amazing explanation, you really dived very deep into the topic, well prepared and interpreted!

Just wanted to say thank you for the video. The level of ire in your voice near the end really captured the frustration of the direction of the games industry and how manipulative it has become. I feel really lucky to have been born in a generation before loot boxes and can recognize what acceptable game design looks like. I can't imagine what the market is gunna look like in ten years time. The only joy I have is that there are plenty of old titles I can fall back on that don't exploit the player out of their hard earned money like this.

I'm glad for this video. I just got into the game after the Diablo 4 trailer that came out during the game awards, and had a ton of fun playing. Still I wanted to be informed about the game and see what was going on after all the backlash over blizzard making a mobile game. I've seen a lot of people just rag on it, claiming the gameplay is terrible or that it isn't diablo and refusing to say anything good about it. I love reviews like yours that are able to talk about the flaws of the game while still recognising good aspects that can make the game worth playing.

I'm shocked. I expected this game to have a bunch of overpriced microtransactions, but instead, we get the most complicated microtransaction system ever conceived. This is an advanced, almost artistic, level of deception and entrapment that we can only gasp at. The lengths people will go to line their pockets at anyone's expense is utterly unfathomable.

Diablo immortal is what mere mobile games aspire to

It's beautiful

It was to be expected when their justification at the announcement was "you all have phones."

@mydogeatspukeThat was simply disgusting. 😢

There will never be anything more pleasant to my canadian ears than a authoratative british accent saying "The diabolically immoral Diablo: Immortal." +1 sub.

Yikes. Glad I watched this before getting too far into the game. I bought some of the small packs but luckily have avoided the big spending thus far, and now I know better. Appreciate this content and completely agree, this game is absolutely fun but so morally corrupt.

Funny thing is, the amount of legendary items the free player gets is somewhat how the game should be. Legendaries raining down in bunches just kills all interest in farming the game at all (for me at least).

This game has such manipulative sale systems, it's almost admirable how professional the person behnd this was. If they didn't sell out their morals, that is.

I don't think anyone understands what you do for the community. I thank you good sir

This game is a masterpiece, The entire theme of Diablo is Hellish, suffering, misery and hopeless loss. Blizzard have delivered exactly that. Just not how we expected.

Indeed. They've taken the evil out of Diablo and put it in the monetisation system.

Very good so sad so true, and also sad

This take made me laugh - well done!^^

"No weapon can overcome the weakness of an undisciplined mind."

Lmao great comment. I didn't see the punch line coming.

All the things you said are true. You forgot to mention though that the enemies in this particular game are leveling and difficulty scaling with you. That means that even if you dont have legendary items in PvE doesnt matter. So someone could argue that you need to pay for you to feel the strongest in this game. And if you are paying you are ruining the fun for everybody that doesnt pay.

Awesome assessment... Completely agree.. Great game.. Though designed to take advantage of those who are easily addicted to things. And it's been done so to an arguably abusive amount. In the first 2 Months I beat the game, ( for one character ), and max their level.. Even gained 150 additional paragon levels. Though those gem upgrades are going to take forever.. Let alone those ones that unlock Legendary gear abilities. And 30 dollars just to change the look of the character...😕😳 Gezzz...

Great video. I am amazed by the audacity of the design behind this game. wow

thank you for making videos like your 7 sins of mmo design i watch them all the time they help me get the most out of the free to play aspect of games like warframe

i thought the d3 auction house was great. i also think it was removed because people found a way to stealth a bunch of chests on the highest difficulty and they flooded the market. you could sell anything with magic resistance, even blues for really good money.

Blizzard were at their peak when they borrowed good ideas from other games and combined + polished it into an amazing product. With Diablo Immortal, they did it again...but this time they took the the most UNETHICAL monetization tactics from all successful mobile/gacha/p2w games and combined it into a single monstrosity. Diablo Immortal is the perfectly calculated final form of predatory monetization in gaming. It's like something made in a laboratory by a team of sales analysts, psychologists, lawyers, etc.

But they can’t beat GGG’s Path Of Exile.

@talentless really ? where is problem of buying stash place for more place or better cathegoring ? U can play without it literaly forewer and u are fine . Or maybe i dont understand what u mean ?

Blizzard long ago corrupted soul ...

ITs only an issue when Dota was born out of that rotting corpse of a company that they got sour

Damn, you'rea absolutely right, the OLD Blizzard would NEVER have done this to Diablo; it runs counter to thier whole original design ethic (bar maybe ripping off other peoples designs but thats another story). This is truly a sign, along with the decline of WoW/Overwatch that Blizzard is truly not the studio so many of us grew up loving. Many years ago, I was invited to visit Blizzard's HQ in California, and much as part of me would still love to go; in a way it is good I didn't, because I think I would have been even more dissapointed at how far the developer has fallen since merging. This really is not old Blizzard, just someone else wearing it's skin.

Great video I played it a little bit never spent any money game felt fun. I knew the micro transactions were bad but damn it's absolutely absurd

I feel like the fact that companies keep making these kinds of games despite the outrage is 100% the players fault, if these companies haven't found it profitable they wouldn't put their money and effort into it, but sadly it is, because there is a huge market for these games, and if they don't do it, someone else will.

Hey John. Just want to let you know that I enjoyed watching this content. Had a great laugh here and there too! Good work!

spot on! need to fight this shit from every dev in every way possible. terrible for the industry as a whole and no one seems to notice or care

Thanks for creating awareness around these incredibly cynical piece of garbage systems. Showed this to a friend who deleted the game, even though he didn't spend any money yet. In the grand scheme it's not much but it's all we can do. Just vote with our wallets and boycott predatory crap like this.

Woah money

How much is 100 nok

dood how come i'm seeing this for the first time?

@Patrick around 10 USD

Im also curious about this donation thing. This is the first im seeing of this.

I could tell the monetization was bad, but I had no idea how bad. Thanks for the video and the very in depth explanation. I don't really have any problems with spending my money on games like that, mainly because I'm cheap, but you inspired me to uninstall it from my phone. Just to show how much I hate that kind of predatory behavior, and I refuse to support it. Thanks again.

OW2 was my first experience with Blizzard's insanely greedy, anti-consumer MTX, and it makes me realize how unregulated the gaming industry is and how much these corporations can actually get away with. Unfortunately it's an uphill battle as policy tends to lag behind media and the continued normalization of predatory in-game shops will make younger gamers more willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on subpar products.

The fact the mobile gaming market is so huge is really depressing, because there are probably a ton of people who don't usually play games on consoles etc on the hook of mobile games like this, and think this abusive monetization scheme is the norm for all games. They don't know how fun and beautiful games can be when developers like Blizzard aren't trying to fleece them for everything they have.

What is truly mind-boggling is that there are still people giving money to Blizzard out there.

Ingame chat arguing about the predatory monetization as you record footage for the review is beautifully poetic

Just remember, folks. Blizzard spent a great deal of time researching this, no doubt hiring teams to best exploit psychological techniques to fool you into parting with your cash.

Industry standard.

*to fool fools into parting with their cash. I'm going to be just fine, and I'm betting so will you.

If by hiring teams you mean hiring Netease.

Hiring teams of shrinks whose sole job is how to hook a player up with casino-like strategies, totally disregarding his wellbeing while predatorially going after his pockets and while also hypocritically ignoring their so-called mottos. I don't think a gaming company will be able to reach a lower ethical point, maybe ever. If you look up the word "zero integrity" in the dictionary, the very first definition will be "Blizzard". Apparently there is no limit on greed. Shame on these people.

It actually makes me sick to think of the time and effort spent on developing these anti player mechanics

Watching this, the game systems didn't seem so bad to me, however I also have to put into context that I am used to these mechanics - I play a lot of games with them, like Eternium, Tower of Fantasy, and Genshin Impact to name a few. Now, I know to a certain level that they're unfair as someone who refuses to spend a dime of money on these games - but like a lot of people, I'm desensitized, and this is where developers can keep getting away with adding these mechanics. Nobody who plays the games for long enough actively stands out because hey, it's just the way things are. Some of these large developers, man. They don't care about their players, just the money.

WOW, just WOW. Sir amazing work. Brilliant. That was not a video on Diablo that was a documentary on how much rotten Blizzard has become !!!!

The rifts using the legendary crests, the player just gets sent into the lootbox to defeat the demons to unlock the box from the inside.

Virgin Diablo Immortals Whale: Microtransactions, predatory lootboxes and okay gameplay Chad Josh Strife Hayes's Patron: Somehow cheaper, Consistently good content, Enjoyable community, get noticed in credits of video

my jaw dropped when you said that these microtransactions were PER CHARACTER. I already thought it was bad but that is just preposterous. I cannot believe Blizzard took one of the greatest franchises in gaming and ruined it.

i cant believe you would expect them not to ruin it

Per character, server locked. (If you ever want to play with a friend who started on another server, you have to pay up again)

nasty people eventually capture what was once loved franchises, star wars is the shinning example

@droid34 Some of us remember Blizzard being an incredible developer.

@droid34 ignorance is bliss. Don't spoil the joyride for him in the rabbit hole

I love how everyone has forgotten about this and are looking forward to D4. We are bending over for this company and telling them it's ok to have their way with us and get away with it. Players should be voting with their wallets, otherwise things will keep getting worse imo.

I was very tentatively considering playing it until I saw what they did with the battlepass for OW2. Completely unrewarding and demands you spend money for any real rewards at every turn. The latest event once again rewards more for not playing the game and just watching Twitch than actually playing. No thanks.

Exactly this! "Omg blizzard is so bad with their abusive money system" -> Diablo 4 drops "Yaaay let's play and make hundreds of videos how great this is". Makes me sick. People have to set a statement and not immediately buy the next big thing from the exact same company.

this is literally the kind of game that everyone who knew their salt in gaming warned people about for a long time

"well, i'm having fun" -every drug addict ever

At least heroin is a guaranteed good time. Gambling is a toss up. Well nowadays with all the fentanyl drugs are pretty much a toss up too. Damn I made myself sadder.

I think addicts get to a point where it's not for fun. It's to feel "normal" or "better". Strange how people who don't do drugs, say things like this. Then turn around and get the most addicted to drugs.

"this idea was abandonned, because it was terrible" really got me

Not surprising that some of the Diablo player 'protection circle' FX are *actual* Satanic Gates of Initiation sigils. Guess you can say the design wizards at Blizzard _really_ did their homework...

What's fantastic is that this is exactly what we feared when blizzard announced a Diablo mobile game

yes, blizz knew that and gave 0 fgs. thats how much they care about the user compared to the wallet

Diablo 4 will be a MTX party...

@El Incognito Remember when they did this to D3 at first? D4 is screwed at launch... 😬

Yep, people knew what was to come literally years in advance when it was first announced. Everyone complaining about this is like the single most epic circlejerk in internet history.

Intermediate currencies like orbs that have to be purchased before being spent on a separate end purchase is always anti consumer and should be illegal to protect consumers from this exact behavior and manipulation. It's just frustrating and gross.

it's hilariously ironic how every time I watch this video (because it deserves being watched repeatedly), I almost always get an ad for Diablo Immoral.

Diablo 3 uses a custom in-house engine that originally incorporated the Havok physics engine, but later switched to the Domino physics engine (also in-house). Another example of this is Half-Life 2. It uses the Source engine along with Havok for the physics. EDIT: Apparently they switched from Havok to their in-house Domino physics engine.

This is the problem with having a financialized economy. Blizzard began with passionate College Bros making high quality games, but it was bought out by big capital and manipulated into the monstrosity that it is today. Big Capital corrupts everything it touches.

>big capital Jews, yeah.

Oh damn judging by your subscriptions you may actually already know who “big capital” is. Even a rare fellow Ak Nation subscriber. Very cool.

I can just imagine my character stimming and pulling strange facial expressions. That's what I always needed in my Diablo games.

It saddens me that we now essentially have a generation of young gamers who have grown up with this type of manipulative monetisation as the norm. Gaming was such an important and enjoyable part of my childhood and I don’t see how young people today can enjoy it as a hobby in the same way I was able to given the route the industry has gone.

Bro I can just play path of exile at any time

There are still ethical developers out there and it’s important to hold the ones who aren’t to that standard. To anyone raising kids understanding which games are and which aren’t exploitative is an important concern - if the kids are interested in games at all, that is. While there were exploitatively monetized games like the Magic or Pokemon card games in the past, incentivizing addictive spending has now become the industry standard to the extent that the worst offenders also have the marketing budget to push the good ones to the wayside. At this point there still are alternatives so media literacy is important for anyone but especially parents so they don’t end up in a situation in which they either allow or forbid everything.

In the old days all you needed to be good at a particular game was put a lot of experience into it. These days all you need to be competive is rich parents. Times have changed a lot! :D

In the case of Diablo, it's quite easy. A new version of Diablo (plus Hellfire) made to work with modern operating systems is available at GOG. Diablo II Remastered and Diablo III are available from Blizzard. Each provides virtually unlimited entertainment and none have manipulative monetization. Grim Dawn has a similar feel, at least up to the Forgotten Gods expansion. Path of Exile is free, but has lacking base inventory. However, adequate inventory shouldn't cost more than a b2p ARPG and then you're set forever unless you also want to buy cosmetics. There are others as well. The genre has a wealth of options these days that provide good value for the money.

@albert einstien that game sucks

I used to defend this game, because leveling was never an issue for me, there's a way to grind levels that makes it very fast free to play. But there's one thing I hated about this game in the end. Gear was not anywhere near where Diablo used to be. Rare drops used to have a chance to be better than uniques. Magical drops used to have their places too. In this game you get gear that you just keep upgrading over and over again by taking abilities from other gears. I had so many legendary pieces my stash was overflowing, but then I realized you couldn't do anything with the other pieces so I ended up scrapping them or dropping them. I never spent a dime but I was actually quite strong. However not compared to mid - top spenders. There's no way you can just randomly find good enough gear to compete with whales and dolphins. It's just not possible. Unfortunately.

Ironically, too much loot is what put me off Diablo 3. There's nothing worse than staring on the inventory grid for 2 minutes deciding what legendary gear to dismantle because there's no room in any of my stash pages for the legendaries I just got from he last rift run... that took about 3-5 minutes to get through. I was playing to get loot, but I developed a hatred for the chore of inventory management.

wow I.. I was having fun with the game. I mean is like a pocket Diablo, but after your video I see it as not really worth the pain. thank you for making such an informative video

It's quite interesting that as someone who hasn't played this game I find myself enlightened that its ok to praise the game for being fun and making money, but what matters is to make sure the game treats players right instead of demanding their credit card for progression. I initially watched this to convince myself to stop playing mobile games like diablo immortal but now find myself accepting that there's 2 sides to every coin.

I have spent alot of time researching abusive game mechanic and still to this day the greed still leaves me floored

This game turned out to be a really nice cash shop simulator. Only occasionally are my spending sessions interrupted by an inconsequential minigame, where I have to run around with a small character and do some stuff (this part looks almost like in those old "arpg"games). I feel really heroic while dual wielding my credit cards!

i wonder when they just cut out the game entirely, cant be long anymore

To me it's like, hey, if it's what the people want, it's what the people want. If people are happy with being treated as loot pinyatas to be harpooned by blizzard predatory systems, then who am I to argue?

Some gacha games are just all menus, so some companies have already been doing what you described for years.

@RYNO 4EVER true, but here we talk about a AAA company that is famous for delivering great games over the years and having a massive community. So this sort of practice is insulting not only to the players but also to the developers and ppl responsible for creating these games till now. I personally expect this sort of systems to exist for indy games where their only way of earning money is through microtransactions in-game, but Blizzard has multiple other ways to do so and also to do effectively.

It's really sad that one of the few things blizzard is currently doing that is potentially good is so awfully monetized.

I’ve been trying to get into this game several times but there’s just something about this game that is missing… something major that stops it from being a fun experience. I don’t know what it is

I did a calculation on asmondgolds reaction to this video describing how much moeny you would have to spend in a year with just 1 hour of gameplay every single day withing that year. Not buying everything such as cosmetics or unnecessary farming items just the grinding of a character. it came to roughly $107,115 USD a year and that is only if there are 4 seasons of battle pass in a year, and not even including the limited time offer packages either because that cannot be predicted. that is just the farming cost for attaining maximum loot chance for things you may not even want to get.

As a big fan of Diablo, what this game turned into is truly a shame. I saw a video by KiraTV a while back about someone spending US$100k and their character got so powerful, he couldn't matchmake anymore and enter anything PVP. It was kind of funny/ironic, if you ask me. This is the video, in case you're curious https://youtu.be/jHq_cSGGy9M Love your videos, Josh. Keep up the great work mate! 🙂

I'm genuinely losing hope in the gaming industry. It seems all the big boys who swore to be in it for the gamers no longer are. We are not people they wish to give great experiences to we are merely wallets to be manipulated

My god, this is...horrifying. I knew it was bad, but I'm completely speechless after watching this. Thank you for being so thorough in your coverage. Everyone needs to know how predatory games have gotten.

Yes. Unfortunately this isn't a solely Diablo Immortal problem, its a mobile gaming problem.

@Herlequin YEP. 😑 which really bothers me since my niece and nephew both play a lot of phone games etc. hell, even Roblox content is littered with micro transactions.

"But its on mobile so its normal for this" I hate this argument because we know AAA Company's want this to be normal on all platforms so they can make soo much money. With little effort to make a good game.

And you know what? It's even worse because he almost left out the Legendary gem part. Not only they are effectively bought in lootboxes of Elder rifts they also are diversified into star rating system. You can get 1 out of 1 gems, 2 out of 2 and from 2 to 5 out of 5 star gems. And as you can get 5 out of 5 are the best gems. And these gems also require upgrading. With other legendary gems as food and source of gem power. And you can have 6 gems in your gear. But wait, there is more! You can use your fully upgraded gem of rank 10 (any star gem if I remember correctly, thanks on that) to awaken a single piece of gear (and it requires an ADDITIONAL consumable for CASH) and then that single piece of gear will be able to have 2 legendary gems at once. So eventually after spending ocean of money your character will be stuffed with 12 fully upgraded legendary gems. And all those gems will have a Gem Resonance which will upgrade your base stats in percent. And the better gems you have the more resonance and therefore stats your character will have completely outgearing free-to-play players. And don't forget that it's per character, not account.

2010: It's not art, it's a product 2020: It's not a product, it's a process

games now have a more complicated monetization than the actual gameplay (mechs) itself