Diablo Immortal continues to earn millions of dollars despite its rocky start at the reception corner.
Diablo Immortal has been getting a lot of flak lately, primarily due to its greedy – and downright scummy at times – integration of microtransactions. The mobile game quickly became one of the most controversial titles on the platform. Haters are damned because they will be surprised to know that the mobile game Diablo Immortal made $24 million two weeks after its launch. This success makes Diablo Immortal one of the highest-earning mobile games in Blizzard’s repertoire, placing only second to its online card game, Hearthstone.
According to the Diablo Immortal official Twitter page, the free-to-play title has accumulated 10 million downloads since its release. While we can all agree that the monetization model has drawn much contention among its fanbase, it’s baffling to see such a well-disliked game earn that much moolah from Diablo Immortal Platinum, at least according to playerauctions.com.
Predatory Microtransactions Makes Spending Easy
According to AppMagic, a data-collection resource tool, we can see that Diablo Immortal continues to grow in its player base and the money they are throwing into the system to obtain rare Diablo Immortal Items on PlayerAuctions. Like what we see in mobile games, Blizzard’s latest title offers players two flavors they can choose from free-to-play and pay-to-win. The former has players enjoying the game without spending a single dime while remaining behind those who choose to pay. At the same time, the latter involves players spending as much money as they can on Diablo Immortal items to stay competitive.
We can see examples of people going with the pay-to-win method, with some popular streamers and content creators spending up to $25,000 on Diablo Immortal. While these circumstances easily prove how Blizzard’s microtransaction system can be, people are still willing to shell out thousands of bucks.
One streamer who goes by the name of “Quin69” went as far as to delete his first character after spending an ungodly amount of money to earn his first five-star gem. This gem boosts statistical values of a character’s specific categories and upgrades weapons. Quin69 spent over $20,000 New Zealand dollars in one of his streams to show how ludicrous the rates were if you want to get anything good in the game. Spoiler alert: he didn’t receive a five-star gem after spending that much money.
In a later stream, Quin69 finally got what he was looking for but then proceeded to delete his character, uninstall Diablo Immortal, and urge his viewers to do the same – minus the spending thousands of dollars on a single in-game item, of course. But despite the numerous attempts of these content creators to highlight Blizzard’s sleazy tactics, Diablo Immortal continues to grow in both players who choose to pour their cash into it or install the game.
Countries that Top the Charts for Diablo Immortal’s Earnings
You can check out gameindustry.biz for more information. Still, the United States currently takes up a hunk of Blizzard’s earnings for Diablo Immortal, generating up to 43% of the total revenue, with South Korea coming in second at 23%. Combining Germany, Canada, and Japan, they represent 17% of Blizzard’s earnings. The remaining 17% is split among the other 49 different countries.
The U.S. and South Korea also make up the most significant portion of Diablo Immortal’s player base; the United States holds 26%, while South Korea has 11% of the total count.
You might think Diablo Immortal is the type of game that would be a blockbuster hit in Asia since that’s where pay-to-win and gacha mobile games tend to thrive, as they’re more popular and accepted. However, based on the data, most of Blizzard’s profits from Immortal were made in the United States. Truly ironic—considering that that’s where players have been complaining the loudest.
Is $24 Million a Lot?
When you think about $24 million, it’s a lot of money. In any other context, it is, but right now, Diablo Immortal is still far from being one of the biggest moneymakers in the mobile gaming industry. According to sensortowers.com, Honor of Kings, a famed title from Tencent, made a whopping $269 million back in May 2022. There are also 206 million made by PUBG mobile and 99.7 million by Genshin Impact—that’s a lot.
If we assume that Diablo Immortals’ profits will stay stable for a month, it’s falling outside the range of the big daddies. For now, all we can do is wait and see; we already know the reception towards the game is a mixed bag, to put it nicely, but that doesn’t stop whales from spending thousands of dollars a day.
The Player Base may Decline After a Few Months
The decreasing player count is a usual trend for online games these days. The decline can be affected by all sorts of factors, including (but not limited to) the players getting bored of the game, technical issues such as bugs and exploits, and many more-Diablo Immortal is not excluded from that.
Given that it’s filled with mechanics that let you spend ludicrous amounts of money, the popularity of Diablo Immortal might die out sooner than later since most of the day-one players are now seeing the “ugliness” of Blizzard’s latest offering. For the MMO’s F2P players, they’ll notice their progression will stagnate to a glacial pace unless Blizzard decides to release more updates to ease their passage–here’s hoping it does come sooner.
The People’s Worries
The community sees Diablo Immortal’s financial success as a warning sign of the things to come for the franchise. It’s understandable for fans to be worried that Blizzard might take this monetization model they’ve done for Diablo Immortal Platinum and adapt it to its future titles, according to PlayerAuctions.
To give the people closure, a developer from Blizzard responded by saying that they have already pledged to the conviction that their upcoming game, Diablo 4, will not follow the same schtick that Immortal has and will only offer optional skins. They clarified this by explaining that Diablo Immortal is free-to-play, while Diablo 4 is a full-priced title.
