Diablo Immortal

About

Diablo Immortal is a free-to-play mobile multiplayer action role-playing game that's part of the Diablo series, developed by Blizzard and NetEase. The game was met with a largely negative reaction after being announced at the 2018 BlizzCon convention, spawning the Do You Guys Not Have Phones? meme. Diablo Immortal was released in June 2022 after delays in 2021 to much criticism over its microtransactions system.

History

2018 BlizzCon Announcement

On November 2nd, 2018, Blizzard unveiled Diablo Immortal at its annual BlizzCon event (shown below).

During the Q&A session, a man asked stood up and asked the Blizzard team if the game was "an out-of-season April Fools' joke" (shown below, left). Also during the session, the audience could be heard booing after Blizzard announced there were no plans for a PC release of the game (shown below, right).

The interaction at the convention also spawned the Do You Guys Not Have Phones? meme.

Blizzard's Response

In an interview with Kotaku, Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham revealed he anticipated a backlash to the announcement, although "not to this degree," saying:

"We know our audience here is passionately PC- and console-focused. We’ve also seen this before. We saw a similar response when we announced that we were bringing Diablo to console, and we saw a similar response to the announcement of Hearthstone.

2022 Release

On June 2nd, 2022, after being delayed in 2021, Diablo Immortal was released for iOS, Android and Windows devices.^[7] On the same day, launch and gameplay trailers for the game were released (shown below, left and right).^[8][9]

Gameplay and Design

Diablo Immortal is a massively multiplayer online action role-playing game (MMORPG) that takes place between the events of Diablo II and Diablo III.

The player is offered to pick one of six available classes (Barbarian, Wizard, Monk, Necromancer, Demon Hunter and Crusader), each with 12 unlockable skills, five of which can be equipped at the same time. In the game, the player explores areas where they fight hordes of monsters, earning gold, experience and equipment, which can then be upgraded through various means. As player achieves higher levels, they are able to earn new skills and improve existing ones.

Unlike previous Diablo games, in Diablo Immortal the mana bar was replaced with a cooldown-based system.

Reception

2018 Announcement

Following the initial announcement at BlizzCon, several posts criticizing the game reached the front page of the /r/diablo^[1][5][6] subreddit. Meanwhile, a video of the audience booing at the announcement reached the front page of /r/videos,^[2] gathering upwards of 79,000 points (87 percent upvoted) and 6,800 comments over the next 48 hours.

On November 3rd, 2018, Redditor Drenmar submitted a screenshot of gaming journalists defending the game against critics on Twitter to /r/KotakuInAction,^[4] where it gathered more than 2,500 points (94 percent upvoted) and 480 comments within two days.

2022 Release

Upon release, the game received widespread criticism over its microtransactions system, which reviewers referred to as "greedy," "predatory" and "manipulative."^[14][15] On Metacritic,^[10] as of June 6th, 2022, the game maintained an average rating of 81 based on six critic reviews and an average user rating of 0.7 based on over 750 user reviews.

On June 2nd, 2022, YouTuber^[11] Bellular News posted a video in which he calculated that in order to fully upgrade a character through purchasing top-rated Legendary Games, a player would need to spend approximately $110,000 (video shown below). Moreover, due to the Legendary Gems dropping randomly out of loot boxes, for an average F2P player, it would take roughly 10 years to fully upgrade their character.

In the following days, several gaming news websites reported on Bellular's calculation, including an article by GameRant.^[12] On June 5th, Redditor^[13] gorays21 posted the article in the /r/Diablo subreddit, where it gained over 1,400 upvotes in one day.

On June 2nd, 2022, streamer and YouTuber^[16] Asmongold played through the same dungeon with and without a paid modifier, showcasing a drastic difference in loot drops. The streamer also posted several videos in which he showcased the advantage P2W players gain over F2P, deliberately spending money on the game at every opportunity (videos shown below).

Related Memes

Do You Guys Not Have Phones?

Do You Guys Not Have Phones is a remark said by Blizzard Enterntainment principal game designer Wyatt Cheng during the presentation of mobile game Diablo Immortal at BlizzCon in November 2018. The remark, which was said as an answer to the crowd's dissapointed reaction to Diablo Immortal being strictly mobile, has since been used to mock both Blizzard Enterntainment and video game publishers acting disconnected from gaming audiences in general.

Following the release of Diablo Immortal, the phrase has humorously altered to "do you guys not have money?" and "do you guys not have wallets?" to comment on the microtransactions system within the game.

Search Interest

External References