The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal 

Addendum: Legendary Crests are even worse, update video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YF--ytWn8mU.html

I really wish predatory games didn’t make so much money. It’s so frustrating to see these incredibly abusive systems financially encouraged by their victims. Thanks for the thorough breakdown of this insidious and reprehensible design.

People defending Diablo Immortal because the gameplay is solid are like fish defending the fishing hook because the bait is tasty.

I'm shocked. I expected this game to have a bunch of overpriced microtransactions, but instead, we get the most complicated microtransaction system ever conceived. This is an advanced, almost artistic, level of deception and entrapment that we can only gasp at. The lengths people will go to line their pockets at anyone's expense is utterly unfathomable.

I have to admit I did get a moment's enjoyment out of Diablo Immortal - when I went to install it to see what the gameplay was like, and realised my Note 10+ wasn't supported. It was the punchline to "Do you not have phones" that was years in the making, and I truly appreciated it.

The putting 3 legendary crests and being prompted to add 7 more for a total of 10 is right out of Las Vegas slot machines. Why spend $2 on a crap bet when you can spend $10 on the ULTRA MAX BET?

This game turned out to be a really nice cash shop simulator. Only occasionally are my spending sessions interrupted by an inconsequential minigame, where I have to run around with a small character and do some stuff (this part looks almost like in those old "arpg"games). I feel really heroic while dual wielding my credit cards!

It saddens me that we now essentially have a generation of young gamers who have grown up with this type of manipulative monetisation as the norm. Gaming was such an important and enjoyable part of my childhood and I don’t see how young people today can enjoy it as a hobby in the same way I was able to given the route the industry has gone.

I know that it was probably not intended,but i love how all the different currencies appear in the video.They start off at the corners and the top part of the screen,in a non intrusive way,but then they start to clutter the screen more and more,to the point where you cant even see the gameplay in the background.It’s basically a representation of the effect the insane amount of different currencies have in game

It started with "don't you guys have phones?!" - what did you expect? Well, to be fair, I didn't expect it to be that insanely predatory and usurious.

It breaks my heart that developers are starting to refer to single player console masterpieces without micro transactions like Elden Ring as “legacy games”

my jaw dropped when you said that these microtransactions were PER CHARACTER. I already thought it was bad but that is just preposterous. I cannot believe Blizzard took one of the greatest franchises in gaming and ruined it.

So while the company was dealing with the harrassment lawsuits, they were actively involved in designing a scheme to to leech money off their players. Despicable.

One correction in regards to D3's cash shop. The issue wasn't tied to some sense of accomplishment that was being bypassed by the cash shop, it's that items were being rolled nonsensically and this *forced* players into using the cash shop to get reasonably rolled weapons. To give an example, I could get class restricted gear, let's say Barbarian great swords, but they would have affixes that would buff Demon Hunter skills and buff Monk related stats. This happened, all the time. You would get so much trash gear that was completely unusable with the goal to push you to using the cash shop. When Act-Blizz removed the cash shop, funny thing, gear rolled all in class all the time.

They have literally built in every single predatory tactic I've seen in any mobile game I've played and dropped due to their predatory tactics. Gatcha 10 pulls and their premium conversion prices. Battle passes with paid tiers. Login reward enhancements that are lost if you don't get on. "Free" claimable stuff in the premium shop to gateway you. Each of these mechanics have varying types of abuse. They have taken all of them to the most abusive and predatory level they can.

The worst part of these kinds of games is that they are very carefully designed to take advantage of human psychology and prey upon our weakness to gamble and take chances, as well as to make our lives easier with convenience through heavy amounts of MTX and pay to win. It's almost like these companies hire psychologists to data mine how gamers behave in order to best take advantage of them monetarily. I'm pretty sure mobile game companies do that as well. Thankfully, a lot of us are smarter than this, and can see right through their tricks.

"none of us wake up expecting to get choked by a death mage but sometimes you get lucky and it happens" 12:04

They know they've gone too far on this one and that's their plan. They're going to say they "fixed" things, "We hear you" and "We're listening". When in reality they've just conditioned us into thinking things are better. This game will NEVER not be P2W. It's too late for them to remove that. Don't get roped in when they give us these worthless promises in future.

As a software developer, i'm a bit suspicious of the "left over files" claim regarding the face tracking software. Especially in a big dev shop like Blizzard, you don't just "forget" files like that. There are normally multiple checks where "left over files" would get noticed and weeded out.

I wish I could say I'm surprised that Blizzard pulled this garbage. I wish I could say I was surprised that Wyatt Cheng said that "you never pay money for gear" when gems are gear by every definition and you pay out the nose for them. But I'm not. And I think that sucks more than if I was.

I'm a year late, but it just struck me: Compare these prices to the value you would get by buying... say.... Slay the Spire on mobile. The value to cost proposition is just mind boggling.

This sort of thing is important to document, so we can really dig in and see all the poor behaviour and make sure it is well understood how aggressive the greed is.

The level of complexity built into this kind monetization is quite honestly bizarre. If they spent all that creative energy into making a better game it could have been a masterpiece lol.

After playing it, the game feels like it's built around greed. There's a decent game here, not perfect, but REALLY good for a mobile game (it is a bit rough around the edges when played on PC, but still very acceptable), but the egregious way they've handled monetization in this game is inexcusable. It truly feels like the game was built as an excuse to charge money. I wanted to game to be good, and the monetization to be their way of saying "We're giving you this game for free, we need to make money off of this too, so here are some options", which is usually in the form of cosmetics or small time savers. To me, it feels like it's the opposite. "We're asking you to pay this amount of money, so we've also made a game so you feel like there's a reason to pay us"

39:12 Incredible writing. You dropped the beat 39 minutes in, and what a payoff. I thought I was sufficiently horrified at this game, but that last single fact put it all in hellish perspective.

Four years ago we lost Totalbiscuit. We never lost his spirit though, because now here stands his successor. As articulate and unyielding as the legend himself, every bit as fit to keep fighting the good fight. I've said it before in a previous comment, but it's worth saying again; John would be proud.

I wasn't surprised that there were predatory mechanics in diablo immortal. I was surprised at how GOOD they were at making those predatory mechanics. It makes every other mobile game's cash shop mechanics look cute in comparison.

I still think-the moment when the gamer asked "Is this a late abril fools joke"-is gamer history-what a legend

Honestly, this video just needs to be presented to the FTC so that they can TRULY investigate the living hell out of Activision.

The thought of finishing an Extreme or Savage fight in FF14 and then having the drops/mounts be locked behind a paywall actually put me in a coma.

My stomach is hurting with disgust. Thank you Josh for managing to keep these information-packed 45 minutes this understandable, so the community can share and see always more of all the insidious things they're trying to hide

Honestly, I feel like trusting any list a company makes about the standards it holds itself to is a fool's errand. They ARE going to ignore it, and whenever they're called out, they'll weasel their way around it. Don't be mistaken; money is ALWAYS the primary motivator.

Best game ever made with the best game system of all time. Truly a masterpiece, Diabillion/10 even brought to you by the Legendary Wyattblo Chengmortal "Don't you have credit cards?" Recommended for everyone. My favorite part of the game is where they all say "It's Diablin time" then swipe that credit card for a Diabillin experience. My heart is full and my soul renewed

We may have lost TB 4 years ago, but at least we still have people like Josh making these thorough (review) videos.

You know, when Blizzard announced a mobile Diablo, the groan was heard round the world. One man even asked if they were joking, and Blizzard acted like WE were the crazy ones. But you know, I wager we all felt that way because we knew, some way or another we KNEW, it was just going to be a free game built entirely from the ground up with predatory microtransactions built in to the fundamental gameplay. This was par for the course, its exactly what we expected and Blizzard still had the audacity to pretend we were weird for not wanting diablo on mobile devices.

The best thing I can say about the "do you guys not have phones?" moment is that it was.... extremally optimistic to assume the only reason people weren't happy or excited was just because they wouldn't be able to play it.

"NO ONE wants you to stop having fun, we want the game industry to TREAT YOU BETTER," is now one of my favorite and most repeated quotes.

8:09 goddam Man, that's a way to sum up 25 years of a franchise, freakin' accurate too! Also I'm a big Diablo fan, and enjoyed immortal quite a bit, but gotta agree with most of what you said, specially when there are people out there with legitimate mental health issues and gambling addiction. Great video.

Watching this, I can't help but imagine parents screaming at their kid for spending hundreds of $$ on this game with their credit card.

I remember how decadent I felt back in the day when I bought my very first in-game item ever: Trang Oul's scales, the last piece I needed for my full Trang's set in D2. I was almost embarrassed to admit it to my friends. Oh how far we have come :/

I think what frustrates me about these extreme cases of monestisation is us players are both the cause and also the only cure for this problem. Luckily for me I'm only susceptible to cosmetic shops, not pay to win shops. The true endgame of any MMO or online game.

One more insidious thing: the Legendary Crests that you get from the battle passes, etc. are a subpar version that only give you account-bound items at the end of the run. You need to pay with fresh cash if you want a legendary crest that gives you items you can sell and trade.

I got hit with nostalgia while listening to you talk about this game. It reminded me, at some points, of watching TotalBiscuit. Excellent video.

Virgin Diablo Immortals Whale: Microtransactions, predatory lootboxes and okay gameplay Chad Josh Strife Hayes's Patron: Somehow cheaper, Consistently good content, Enjoyable community, get noticed in credits of video

Imagine if totalbiscuit was still alive to see this game, he would rip this game to shreds

Thank you for this. I recently spent over $20k that I could not afford on an objectively awful game over 1.5 years, realizing the entire time that I had a huge problem. Watching this and learning to identify some of the tricks they use to hook whales made me hard quit and uninstall DI after only spending about $60, and now I think I can avoid these games in the future.

I can literally picture Blizzard in a conference room making a goddamn Diablo Immortal monetization flowchart taking up 7 whiteboards and at the end collectively ejaculating all over the table with shit-eating grins on their faces. When they announced at that BlizzCon this would be a mobile only game, players shouldn't have tried to convince them to make it for PC. Because this is exactly what I expected. They didn't hear "Make a PC-style Diablo game that we can play on PC" They heard "Make a mobile-style Diablo game as a PC game that neither costs us much to port over nor loses any of its ability to add an entire digit to our net worth"

I'm not even convinced it's a fundamentally good game. It's designed to be enjoyable while you're leveling to hook you. You advance in power quickly, gear upgrades drop constantly, you rapidly gain new skills and legendary traits that seem to open up a wide variety of build paths, and new systems are introduced frequently. All of that goes away shortly after 60. H1 difficulty is trivial even in just-hit-60 gear. You'll want to start building a set for your secondary gear slots, but you can only acquire 2 pieces in H1 content, and each piece drops from a single dungeon, so you're going to be running one or two of the story dungeons countless times for a single piece of gear. Once you have your 2-piece bonus, your only real objective is grinding paragon levels, because the H2 dungeons that drop your 3rd and 4th set piece are locked behind Paragon 30. The loot you collect along the way is irrelevant, because enemies outside of Challenge Rifts are already trivial to kill and loot level is linked to paragon level, so everything you're wearing becomes obsolete as you progress. If you were hoping for incremental gains on some other track, blacksmith upgrades are also gated behind your paragon level, and virtually every source of remotely valuable loot in the game world has a hidden daily cap, including legendary world drops, drops from event bosses, normal gems from hidden lairs, you name it. Paragon levels themselves are soft-capped by the server paragon level; a factor hidden in an obscure location in the UI that grants you diminishing returns on experience gains the farther you advance ahead of it. The only progression system that's not utterly strangled by time gates is, of course, the legendary gem system, and only to the extent that you're willing to pay to bypass the monthly legendary crest allowance. The moment-to-moment gameplay is good short-term fun (at least on mobile platforms; the PC port has major issues), but the game is missing the end-game depth that drives successful ARPGs. There are loads of systems, but they're redundant; normal gems, legacy of the horadrim, helliquary upgrades, blacksmith upgrades, etc, all amount to exactly the same thing -- virtually imperceptible incremental stat modifiers. They're there to bulk up your daily and weekly chore list, not to meaningfully advance your character. On top of that, the nature of set gear, legendary gear, and legendary gems naturally encourages you to pick a build early and stick with it, so build variety goes out the window by level 60, and because upgrade levels and legendary traits can be transferred between pieces of gear, once you get the legendary your build needs for a particular slot, there will never be a meaningful drop for that slot ever again-- if the arrow is green, you slap it on and paste your old legendary on top of it. Itemization is the backbone of the genre, and by Paragon 10, there wasn't a single drop available in H1 content outside of a Legendary-crested rift that would be beneficial to me. Add on to all of that the fact that the game openly discourages one of the fundamental pillars of ARPG longevity -- rolling and gearing alts. Alts in Diabo Immortal do not benefit in any way from anything you do on your main. They do not inherit Paragon levels as they did in D3. There is no shared stash so you cannot give them items. Even if you could give them items, potentially useful gear like set items lock to your character class on pickup (there are 8 generic sets in the game, none of the sets are inherently class-specific). Resources like blacksmith scraps are not shared. Your new character won't even inherit your keybinds if you play on PC. The one and only thing the game will remember between one character and the next is which cosmetic rewards you've already redeemed. This is, ultimately, a mediocre-leaning-towards-poor ARPG with a flashy, high-octane leveling experience that distracts you enough to prevent you from looking under the hood too closely until you've sunk enough hours in to build habits and feel invested. The end-game is a slipshod mess of throttled progression tracks, hidden loot caps, shallow itemization, limited build variety, long daily chore lists with meager rewards, and redundant stat stick systems with no impact on gameplay. That the game pressures you relentlessly to spend enormous amounts of money before you figure that out just makes the game's monetization strategy seem that much worse.

Your magnum opus hands down. The ending just blew my mind. Such a well structured video! It shows how intelligent you put everything together. Great!

The biggest tragedy is that there'll probably never going to be this fun, fairly priced game available for us. The predatory monetisation destroyed any possibility of this game, perhaps this series, to ever be as good as it's supposed to.

What's really messed up is we already lost this. The whole "we have to come together" kind of goes out the window when the game has already made $6m. The developers who care about the game and have passion for the project will probably be upset and might voice their concerns over the backlash, but upper management is always going to look out for profits. We already know this, just look at the Blitzchung thing. Blizzard is in the business of making money as a modern day gaming company. The only way to combat this is with legislation that bans the game for predatory systems. You want to hurt Blizzard? Get the game banned in the US or all of Europe. And sadly, that still probably wouldn't work because this game, like most of the mobile gaming market, is primarily targeted at Eastern countries.

Intermediate currencies like orbs that have to be purchased before being spent on a separate end purchase is always anti consumer and should be illegal to protect consumers from this exact behavior and manipulation. It's just frustrating and gross.

I have a theory that they went overboard on the predatory monitization deliberately. That way, they stand to make record profits on those systems, or they could roll back some of the systems, and will still have pushed the envelope on monitization, and they can spin it for positive PR. Either way, Blizzard wins, players lose.

There is a book I read in college titled “addiction by design” it’s about slot machines but can be effectively weaponized into games and has been, I’m convinced everyone at blizzard has read this

The Boon of Plenty is like Genshin Impact's Welkin Moon on abusive crack. Welkin still has the FOMO element of "If you miss a day, you miss that day's reward," But the cumulative element is just a whole new level of insidious.

The funniest thing is people criticized this game hard..just to buy duablo 4 right after and then complain about that too lol Some gaming fans are actual bots.

I understand these systems are predatory. I know full well that it is preying on people with addictive personalities, who cannot help themselves. I am sure there will be millions of players who just drop about $30 total on the game over the course of a year, which is fine and not a big deal. But please... as gamers, as a community, and more importantly as adults, we have to remember something -- these are virtual items! No matter how much money you spend, whether it is 10 bucks or 200 grand, this isn't going to make your life better. None of this translates to a roof over your head or food on the table. It isn't going to help you at work or in your relationship, it's just going to give you new problems. Please guys don't give in to this. Don't spend your hard earned money on this disgusting monetization. Keep your money.

I remember Josh talking about a lot of this stuff before with other F2P games... (that he himself has thoroughly played through to test them out) so he definitely knows what he's talking about when it comes to a lot of this stuff.

OW2 was my first experience with Blizzard's insanely greedy, anti-consumer MTX, and it makes me realize how unregulated the gaming industry is and how much these corporations can actually get away with. Unfortunately it's an uphill battle as policy tends to lag behind media and the continued normalization of predatory in-game shops will make younger gamers more willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on subpar products.

Something I feel you missed is that it's not just that missing a day pushes the Boon of Plenty's largest reward into the next one, it pushes *all* of them into the next one. Buy one and miss a day just once? For all eternity, you will always get two legendary crests on that first day of buying it. You're always just one day off. Always until you miss more days. Which you're less likely to do because you've already been burned by missing just one day. It's even worse.

The more you talked, the more I realised the similarities with a different mobile game I got sucked into a few years ago. I quit when a huge lack of progress clashed with my hesitancy to spend anything more than small amounts of money on very specific deals. I'm now very glad I did quit.

Anyone arguing that "well I'm having fun" is like someone pumping quarters into a slot machine shrugging and saying "well I'm having fun". Good, good for you, you've been conditioned by a game designed by a bunch of psychologists sitting around a board room figuring out how to trigger a dopamine rush via colors and sounds and x-amount of rewards per minute to keep you clicking. Yes you are having fun... good job you've been conditioned... congratulations.

You know...fine! Blizzard wants to make money with a mobile game. Good, great, grand. But with the money you make from that game Blizzard, DON'T YOU DARE ADD A HINT IF THAT CRAP TO A FULL-PRICED PAID GAME!! But it's already creeping in to Diablo IV. Paid season pass to get more stuff and an expensive store to buy cosmetics. GOSH DANG-IT BLIZZARD. I mean...what the hell man!? Why do I feel left out after paying $70! It's bad enough I'm required to be online all-the-time. It's makes me feel bad Blizzard...if you're reading this. Do you even care?

I just want to say that I absolutely love the patron names bit. It gives me a chuckle every time I see the tiny font, and I can't wait until it just becomes a series of lines

I once met a dude that did sweepstakes scams and the way this game is monetized pretty closely resembles what this dude described to me. The "it may only be 0.89p, but now you are invested" line was pretty much verbatim lol

it's hilariously ironic how every time I watch this video (because it deserves being watched repeatedly), I almost always get an ad for Diablo Immoral.

It's so nice that Blizzard with all of its expertise, funds, brand status used all of these things to implement world leading predatory practices in the industry, an evolution from just merely making great products for its fans.

It's frustrating seeing how games are degraded to fleece out the players, and even more frustrating seeing how many people don't care or even go out of their way to defend this practices because "it doesn't affect me". We need to organize and fight against this, before the standard for game monetization keeps falling lower.

One thing I haven't seen people talk about in regards to his game is the patent Activision has from 2017 for a system to match free players with those who have spent money, in a way that would "encourage" the free player to spend money as well.

the worst part about all of this is actually this is exactly what everyone expected and feared when they first announced it. and "do you guys not have phones" sums up the total thought blizzard put in for the player.

"What we stand for" or whatever a company calls it is pure PR, and I wish more people would understand that. When you work for these places they dont tell you to do all these things either, they make you watch videos and conferences and read documents that all say how great the company is. They spend significantly more time trying to convince employees that the company is great and ethical than they do teaching employees to be great or ethical.

Funnily enough, this just shows they put more effort hiding the gacha mechanics to pass through laws than the game itself

"Well I'm having fun." Addicts also say this. Having fun does not mean the mode of experiencing fun is ethical, moral or good in the long term for you or others.

thank you for making videos like your 7 sins of mmo design i watch them all the time they help me get the most out of the free to play aspect of games like warframe

I grew to loathe Blizzard but my heart breaks for my father who adores Diablo. Thankfully my brother and I managed to convince him not to play this garbage. I dread to think what Diablo 4 is gonna be like...

Imagine making a game that sells 30 million copies (Diablo 3) and your plan for next game is "we need to add mobile monetization to this cause selling 30 million copies of a game isn't good enough revenue."

This is like a bottomless pit of awfulness where you think it's as bad, as deep as it gets, but no it somehow goes even deeper every time you look down.

If you had told me 15 years ago they'd make a Diablo game that I would refuse to play on principles of freaking morality alone, I wouldn't have believed it. I'm not playing Diablo: Immortal. I don't care if they do "rebalance" microtransactions. If we don't give them a reason not to do this in the future, you can say goodbye to Diablo 4 being a pleasant experience.

the worst part is that they probably knew this backlash would happen and they probably will change it in the future and say "we heard your complaints... yadda yadda... heres 2.000 gems and some gold" meanwhile they already got all the money they wanted

New to the channel, just wanted to say I always appreciate when a RU-vidr uses as much of their own footage as possible. It shows you actually put the time and effort into the game before judging it.

Funny thing is, the amount of legendary items the free player gets is somewhat how the game should be. Legendaries raining down in bunches just kills all interest in farming the game at all (for me at least).

This was legitimately one of the best pieces of journalism I have ever seen.

Aww, Callum Upton and Josh are playing together! You two have become absolute besties because of Earth 2 and its the happiest RU-vid story I've seen in over a year.

"None of us wake up expecting to be choked by a Death Mage but sometimes, you just get lucky and it happens..." Josh Strife Hayes 2022

You know what I like about you Josh? 80% of your stuff is comedy and very entertaining but the other 20% is very intelligent, unbiased and honest conversations / reviews. I think it's this balance that keeps people watching. They know we can get great information here but also have a good laugh at the same time.

Your videos are amazing. But this video is an absolute masterpiece. Your analysis and the way you explain the mechanics it’s incredible. As game director and CEO of a new studio, I think we have the responsibility to create products that people can enjoy, we need to make money to keep doing games, but we need to create this game keeping in mind all our community. I hope one day you do a video about Rifters, our game. Keep doing this. You are a great RU-vidr for all gamers.

They really need to make a mandate where if you use a secondary "money" like the orbs, they should be forced to put the money cost in parenthesis so that it can be more clear and less manipulative. So it would be basically: 1650 Orbs ($20)

There will never be anything more pleasant to my canadian ears than a authoratative british accent saying "The diabolically immoral Diablo: Immortal." +1 sub.

This has me most concerned for Diablo 4. I've never cared much for Diablo Immortal but I guess I really should. This is unacceptable and exploits mentally ill people who can't help but spend spend spend. The hands of approach and plausible deniability by companies and regular people make this issue even worse. I don't understand how the gaming landscape has changed to promote addiction while the world watches.

Extreme and utterly disgusting practices,..... to say the least. Thanks for being direct and clinical. This is a scam hidden behind an alright game that hasnt evolved for decades.

Amazing review. I can't possible imagine the PHD's employed in statistics, psychology, game theory, addictive personality disorder, casino business models, mathematics, and every other disciplines associated with the production of a money machine. At least Blizzard works for their scam, the feds just adjust figures on computers. This game is much to complicated for me, even if I lived to 500. You have done one hell of a job with this video... superb reporting.

The boon of plenty 30 cumulative days thing feels like paying first and last on rent

I kind of had a similar experience, in a way that initially the game seemed like a lot of fun but then once the tutorial was over, I had the shop shoved right into my face and after taking a look at what they sell, I had to stop playing because I am absolutely someone who has addictive tendencies and I sunk cash into games before, and I don't trust myself to have enough self control. People who say things like "just don't buy anything" are probably the same people who see drug addiction or gambling addiction as some sort of moral failing, completely disregarding that for example betting shops are always set up in low - income areas where people will be most susceptible to it. This stuff doesn't come out of nowhere. Thank you for the video.

Honestly, it's just hilarious seeing the defenses they come up with trying to justify insane prices and predatory practices.

Quinn spending $15k is literally apart of the problem. They are literally throwing money at blizzard for views.

You know that Blizzard’s design leads had to sit down with a team of lawyers to meticulously design this game around as many gambling restrictions as possible. It is genuinely disgusting.

Extra Scummy fact about the Boon of Plenty: Do you know why the requirements are designed "cumulative"? 1. User retention (login tracker for mobile/pc users) influences the size of people playing and Blizzard's revenue. 2. It usually takes 28 days to track your game usage, engagement and money spent. 3. These manipulation tactics keep the numbers high to satisfy Blizzard's executives.

We don't live in a world where corporations make what customers want. We live in a crony corporatist world where the whole games industry largely works together to force players into microtransaction and subscription models to drain us of our money.

Watches video on diablo immortal … gets ad for it before video starts

20:39 This. This was my experience as well. I need to engage with SO many different systems if I want to improve my character. If I want, say, a 40% increase to my character, I need to engage with 15-20 different systems that all grant a 1-3% power increase, yet all somehow relate to eachother. These are just hypothetical numbers, but that's what I felt like when the game started throwing these systems at me.