They haven’t shown any shame whatsoever. You need to have morals to feel shame.
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people are continuously paying for the product just to be able to “use it”. Mind you, you can play for free but there are so many gates and hurdles in your way preventing you from progressing that you have to pay something to get past it. I wouldn’t call that a successful product I would call that exploiting people’s addiction to video games.
But I do get your point. the game is pretty damn successful so far in terms of how much THEY made from it. But it’s metacritic score is like 0.5 so I don’t get it. People complaining about its monetization yet they’ve made so much money so far YET AGAIN people continue to play it…
I’m just really glad I haven’t bought a blizzard game since WoW: Shadowlands I learned my lesson a while ago just not fast enough.
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I kinda doubt it but I do understand the concern. According to Rykker he thinks the monetization for D4 will likely be in the way of cosmetics, perhaps more stash space, maybe even a battle pass but I would bet that would be the worst of it.
“we’re not talking about monetization right now” - D:I Team
“we will not sell power” - D4 team
source @timestamp 11:25
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Everyone did. They’re letting the game speak for itself for the most part (which is not a bad strategy). It’s 4.5 stars (as of right now) on the App Store.
There is a saying that goes along the lines of if you gauge the intelligence of a fish by its ability to climb a tree and convince it of the results it will lead its whole life thinking that it’s stupid.
The target audience was the mobile platform.
The project was free to play.
The project has generated revenue.
It is by no means a failure in that regard. Perhaps a disappointment…
Me? I don’t play mobile games on my phone. I also don’t support the pay to win model. But be mad at the developers for doing so? The fan mentality that enables such success?
There is another saying that comes to mind. Don’t hate the playa, playa… Hate the game.
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“Are they ashamed of Diablo Immortal?”
Shame was lost long ago 
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I think they’ll just let it die in the west. P2W is pretty well accepted in Asia and NetEase is a Chinese company.
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no Blizzard will hang on to it claiming it still is a success even as the entire internet is telling them its floundering after all THEY know what we want better than we do
Generating revenue doesn’t really mean it wouldn’t be a failure. At minimum it would need to return a profit.
Yeah, the fault here is primarily Blizzards, not individual developers, nor the customers. Blizzard did this, and as a company they deserve all the hate they get. But people should not take it personally on any specific employees.
Most of them are likely embarrassed about delivering a game such as D:I.
I would go one step further. Even if a game does make a profit, if selling that game diminishes your corporate reputation so that whatever profit that game made is lost in future sales, then that game is a failure.
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yes and as customers we would be remiss in our responsibility to not remind them of theirs for disregarding our voices that were telling them of this fact
ever since 2018 Blizzard was being warned this game was NOT going to be the overwhelming success they tried to claim it was and rather than step back and take pause to think about it no they slammed on the accelerator and charged full speed ahead absolutely oblivous to the feedback simply because it wasnt what they wanted to hear
For sure they are. They expected to make more cash from it.
why would they be ashamed? They don’t care if they get their money. that’s how the real world works.
the quality of the product does not matter, bottom dollar matters. Blizzard doesn’t care about their own games or their own customers for that matter (but they do care about the dollar the customer gives).
Some companies love to give a quality product. And customers will love them for it.
Some companies will give a bad product and the customers will hate them for it but still continue to pay. Yes they lose the trust of a lot of customers but some people will stick around no matter what.
Blizzard I think bleeds a lot of customers but it’s not enough for them to put them in a financial crisis. They are rewarded for bad practice so they keep doing it.
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I don’t think that Wyatt is embarrassed in the slightest.
This is his baby.
Yeah, if you thought the “Do you guys not have phones?” was brazen and out of touch with Diablo’s core audience, defending the monetisation of model of Diablo Immortal, after clearly having stated that you couldn’t buy gear / power for money, takes it to the next level.
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Unfortunately, it seems the way things are going indicates a AAA company’s reputation is irrelevant. Sales are more to do with the gamers of the world all wanting to participate in a big release event together. Even if everyone knows the game is going to be awful and exploitative. I mean you’d think EA would be irrelevant by now, but they have no problem with massive revenue to this day.
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He might simply be doing what his bossed ordered. Not refusing might show a lack of spine, but not necessarily agreement.
That said, I definitely think he is wrong on many of his game design views. He could definitely be completely misguided on P2W.
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kind of brings to mind another statement an employee of Blizzard said once and it remains true to this day
“Posting impassionately, they say you don’t care.
Posting nothing, they say you ignore.
Posting with passion, you incite trolls.
Posting fluff, you say nonsense.
Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale.
There is no win.
There is only slow degradation.
Take note. It is the first and only time you’ll see someone in my position make that position.
You can be me when I’m gone.”
Yep, he was amazing.
If they aren’t they should be. Its such a blatant abomination corporate cash grab of a game.
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