Diablo Immortal received strong criticism after the launch and was bombarded with lousy reviews. Still, the game is doing very well financially, and with the delayed launch in China, it has increased its player base by a third.
This is the state of Diablo Immortal: Since launching on June 2nd, Blizzard’s new game has faced a spate of negative reactions and review bombing from fans.
Above all, the cash shop and the monetization of Diablo Immortal were criticized, which is particularly strong in the endgame Pay2Win and uses psychological tricks to pull the money out of the players’ pockets.
However, the negativity didn’t change the fact that the A-RPG became very successful. Sales of $10 million were reported just a week after launch, and the number kept growing.
On July 28, analytics site SensorTower reported that Diablo Immortal has surpassed $100 million in revenue generated through Google Play Store and the App Store. That means the figure is probably much higher since PC revenue isn’t counted.
First the threat of a ban, then exploding player numbers
However, there was a big problem for Blizzard with Diablo Immortal. The launch in China, one of the largest mobile markets in the world, should have taken place in mid-June and was in the balance for a long time.
That’s why there were problems with China: The reason for a possible suspension of Diablo Immortal was a statement that allegedly came from one of Blizzard’s employees on the marketing team. It indirectly demanded that the head of state of China, Xi Jinping, should resign.
Accordingly, for some time it looked as if Blizzard would be revoked by the state of the license to release Diablo Immortal. But that also turned out positive for the game.
Diablo Immortal celebrated its official launch in China on July 25, causing player numbers to skyrocket. Just 2 days before the release, the game’s official Twitter account celebrated that the number of active players exceeded 20 million.
The next tweet followed less than a week later, as that number increased by a whopping 50% to 30 million. As a small “thank you”, players can therefore receive an additional legendary emblem and 6 rare boxes.
So Blizzard can look forward to a new sales milestone soon, because mobile customers in China are known to have few problems with Pay2Win mechanics and strong monetization.
A Western player, on the other hand, tested how much loot a Free2Play player would get in Diablo Immortal:
Player runs through 1,000 Rifts in Diablo Immortal without paying – Shows how many Legendaries are in it