There is no way( but then again it’s blizzard) Wyatt Cheng doesn’t know the backlash they will get for the predatory P2W.
The probably bet the Chinese market can offset the negativity in the west. In other word chasing Chinese Yuan over losing player base in the west.
What many Western firm not know is, like Hollywood, tech companies ate starting to learn. Once they know all your tricks , they will kick you out and replace with their own.
Didn’t know that those who are paying and whaling in Lost Ark US are Chinese.
And yes, only western players play B2P games and no mobile games.
I hope they get more than a backlash; I want legal action taken against these monetization practices. It’s sickening.
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well in certian countries DI is already blocked
[Diablo Immortal is already banned in two countries (msn. com)](https ://www.
msn .com/en-us/news/ technology/diablo-immortal-is-already-banned-in-two-countries/ar-AAXXqFV)
So is Lost Ark it’s worth pointing out
I believe ActiBlizz was sued in February of this year, have not been able to find the links for it again but it was related to loot boxes, and was a US based lawsuit.
DI is a Chinese P2W game with a Blizzard skin. I’ve tried NetEase games before and quit them all because they’re so predatory.
Wyatt is almost certainly not responsible for the monetization scheme. Who coded it is mostly immaterial here. The decision for how aggressive this model is currently rests entirely on management, and I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if that’s on the ABK side, not on the Blizzard side. Blizzard has been very careful thus far not to wade into P2W schemes more than a tiny bit (heroes of the storm being the biggest push due to lack of proper hero balancing due to that game’s monetization model). They’ve only gone for cosmetic and non-power related MTX up until D:I. This reeks of Kotick all the way to the bank.
What saddens me here is that the D:I developers on the Blizzard side, especially Wyatt Cheng, are truly dedicated Diablo fans through and through. They did make a game that at its core looks really good, even for being an “MMO”. My biggest fear here is that the insidiously predatory MTX model it’s using will taint Diablo 4 to such an extent that we may never end up seeing the B2P + cosmetic MTX model they promised us, but a repeat of D:I’s current model should D:I rake in enough money from any territory, be it US, EU, or Asia.
But for all of the negatives being driven by the MTX model, pinning it on Wyatt Cheng doesn’t fit with the reality of the type of developer he is. He’s lore, aesthetic, and mechanics driven. It would be a huge error to pin the game’s current monetization scheme on him or even his team when we know full well upper management (ABK in this case) is responsible for the decision on that.
This article mentions both an Overwatch lawsuit from March that they successfully kept out of court/went to arbitration and a hearthstone card pack related lawsuit. (Hearthstone developer Blizzard Entertainment facing class action suit - Polygon).
The article also mentions a lawsuit against Epic over Fortnite “loot llamas” that resulted in them no longer offering those and giving 1,000 vbucks to anyone who had bought one. They chose to settle though, so I guess it’s not clear if they had fought it harder if they would have had to stop. Maybe they just decided to not be evil and realized they were making enough money in other ways?
I can’t be the only one who has noticed this was true for both Immoral but also D3 when it was launched.
Immoral is DEFINITELY worse - but when D3 launch they gave us a cute 12ish level beta before anyone realized the ENTIRE loot system was built on the RMAH. I sold one legendary and made more than the price of the game from it, but I hated the game because the grind was broken because of it.
I think the difference this time is that they’re aren’t going to be fixing any of these systems with Immoral.
This also dashes any tiny sliver of hope I had that Arclight Rumble is going to be in the slightest way playable.
OW2 beta made me hate that game now too so that’s fun. Warcraft lost my trust with Shadowlands.
And on top of that the last year of Blizzard being… !@#$ing disgusting at the top I’m just done with them since they can’t seem to get that !@#$ figured out either.
… I didn’t mean to go on a rant here in my reply here but once I got started I realized I had more to say about it over all.
Blizzard just lost a customer of 20 years. Not that they care. Enough whales gonna simp D:I to carry them on into the next cash grab.
Used to love these IPs. What a bummer.
I would say the middle ground is have all of the pay to win in China since it would most likely be the largest amount of those that don’t mind such features. While you give us westerners a shop without pay to win features. They have to separate versions of D3. One for China and another for the rest. In the Western version they can allow the cosmetics with maybe account services that are not a monthly rent of stash space to be permanent. Along with the cosmetics being account wide like you said.
Also they could sell special packs similar to Path of Exile for each new season they have a theme for that season. Then they have the pack that would have some good things in it where it doesn’t give you more power.
This is what scares me too and why I will not be preordering D4. I will wait until release to see what they commit to. Along with several other things they have said where I do not want them to drop the “its just semantics” line or “things change during development”.
Anybody with any common sense knows it is the guys at the top of the top making these calls on the monetization. Even with this, it still does not let Wyatt totally off the hook. He signed on for this. He has known about the monetization scheme for a very, very long time. He made the choice to stay on as lead developer. While I am sure he did not make the call on any of the scheme, he did nothing to stop it either.
It’s sickening. Blizz has no shame.
I’m not so sure. In D3 at launch all you got for loot was trash and the farming was for nothing but gold. Inferno was a paywall for most classes. So we broke vases for hours. It was soul-crushing.
At least DI has the rifts, dungeons, and there are actually legendaries to find. Don’t get me wrong - it’s a deeply predatory Asian cash grabbing MMO with an Immortal system that’s obviously built for whales - but I’m still seeing a more enjoyable F2P game in DI than D3 was at launch.
Blizzard is licking the electric fence looking for a weakness. P2W mechanics, in particular in mobile games, are much more tolerated in the West than they’ve ever been. How much can a company get away with is the question.
I think you’re correct that the Eastern markets will offset any losses and I think Blizzard is prepared for this risk because they need to find out how to best monetize D4. I can only guess what that method will be, but it’s a very safe assumption it will not be a $60 dollar game with an expansion or two. Blizzard simply doesn’t produce the volume of games for that to be a practical reality. They need the sort of long term residual income that a F2P model can provide.
Not need though, but they do want it. 
More profit and return on limited investment is always appreciated by them. That does not take away it is about maximising profits instead of making a reasonable profit.
Now how your stance about how acceptable that is and if it also should allow predatory tactics and/or even unethical behavior in the name of free and maximum profit, well that also depends on your stance on life and how a society should be according to your views and as such is always debatable. That is more the discussion what is still a fair profit and how far are companies allowed to go in that.
thats mostly all he ever does, rant about stuff then goes and does/promote the very thing he spent an hour or so whining about… and if its not that it’s him doing the laziest form of “content creation” by doing reaction videos to other peoples videos that they’ve spent time editing and perfecting.
He is the very definition of hypocrite .
Honest when I saw the screen and saw NetEase, i laughed so hard knowing dang well this was going to be P2W.
Then as I played more, I was like WOW, so blizzard basically said "here’s our D3 Assets, make a new Diablo mobile game for us, we’re to busy trying to figure out the crap whole of harassment cases we stepped in. "
And this is what NetEase came up with, and Blizzard was like “Oh sweet, we love it!”
well of course they do if its connected to China in any way Blizzard will go above and beyond to support it
theyd rather lose 100000 players in any other country even if they only gain 100 in china