Blizzard just released its latest Diablo game, Diablo Immortal, and it ended up being one of the most talked-about topics in gaming this month for many reasons - most of which are not positive. This is mainly due to the fact that Diablo Immortal was envisioned as a mobile Diablo experience for everyone to enjoy, including PC users, but it was designed with a gacha-like in-app monetization system. The fact that Diablo Immortal players can only get a limited amount of free attempts at Legendary 5/5-star gems, which are the best endgame items one can own, is only made worse by how much it can cost to get one by paying real money through microtransactions.
Recently, popular Diablo Immortal streamer Quin69 spent over $25,000 NZD to get a single 5-star gem; something he did to prove just how predatory the game's current monetization system can be. Because the community rapidly learned about these issues, Diablo Immortal ended up becoming the game with the lowest average review score on Metacritic ever, which is telling. The news that Diablo Immortal made $24 million in two weeks for Blizzard may seem like a bad thing when one considers how that money was accumulated, but it could also be a good sign that the community frontloaded its interest, and now that revenue will only drop in time.
Why Diablo Immortal's Revenue is Not as Worrisome as One Might Think
Although $24 million is a huge amount of money that sounds daunting when associated with Diablo Immortal, especially considering how loud the community has been about its dislike of the mobile game's monetization practices, it's worth putting things into perspective. The mobile gaming market, for starters, is used to much higher revenue numbers for highly anticipated releases, especially around the first two weeks or first month out - as has been seen time and again with heavy-hitters being games like Honor of Kings, Genshin Impact, PUBG Mobile, Pokemon GO, and Candy Crush Saga.
Compared to some of these games, Diablo Immortal's $24 million revenue is not that impressive. The United States mobile gaming market generated $1.9 billion just in May 2022. It's plausible that Diablo Immortal's numbers will go down over time as the game's honeymoon period is over and only a small percentage of players manage to fully gear out their characters for PvE content. As far as PvP goes, it's also likely that high-spenders will lose interest if not matched with fellow players who can compete at their power level.
Overall, Diablo Immortal making millions of dollars in revenue for Blizzard is not surprising, but it shouldn't be taken as a warning - rather, it could turn out that players are not willing to spend as much money on this game as one would think following first impressions. Diablo Immortal doesn't guarantee good drops to those who spend money, with the game's bad luck protection system only guaranteeing a 2/5-star gem after 50 tries. Thus, the next few months are going to be crucial to determine how successful Blizzard's monetization for Diablo Immortal will be, but the first two weeks solidified an impression that the game is likely not going to be among the biggest on the market just yet, if ever.
Diablo Immortal is available now on Mobile and PC.