Apparently ‘Misinformation’ On Microtransactions Are The Cause Of Diablo Immortal's Poor Ratings

Blizzard’s free-to-play MMO Diablo Immortal released on June 2 on iOS and Android, and as an open beta for PC. The game is currently scoring a 0.7 on metacritic with the rating of ‘overwhelming dislike,’ with most of the comments on the site holding a venomous disdain due to the pay-to-win system that users claim to be in place.

Honesty and transparency should be the backbone of most industries, but especially those who rely so closely on their clientele or playerbase. The director of Diablo Immortal, Wyatt Cheng, had previously stated that, “In Diablo Immortal, there is no way to acquire or rank up gear using money.” However, this statement had led many to believe the game would be more free-to-play friendly then it actually turned out to be.

One Twitch streamer named Zizaran addressed the issue on Twitter, asking “What happened in 4 months? Or are the gems not considered gear?” These gems in question won’t allow players to obtain better gear, however they will allow players to advance gems and legendary gems, which then can be used to level up characters in post-game. It has been said that currently, players cannot obtain the highest tier Legendary Gems without spending real money, and it’s been estimated that fully upgrading a post-game character would cost up to $110,000 worth of gems.

Another Twitter user asked why Cheng was even addressing the microtransactions to begin with, where Cheng responded with: “I don’t like it if information is misleading. There’s a difference between players liking or not liking a game based on its merits (which I can accept, not every game is for everybody) vs. liking or not liking a game based on misinformation surrounding it.”

But it would seem that the misinformation or at the very least the confusion was made by Cheng himself. While Cheng addressed the discrepancy be advising his comments were about gear, not gems, but the truth is that once post-game hits, the game is pretty pay-to-win. Players who enjoy PvP will quickly realize that they won’t be able to win against someone who has paid a substantial amount of money into the game.

This isn't the first time fans are disappointed with Activision Blizzard, and it won’t be the last, but the question remains, how many times can Activision Blizzard continue to mess up before fans throw in the towel and walk away?

Note: Activision Blizzard is still under investigation by the state of California for serious harassment charges. CEO Bobby Kotick is alleged to have known about such actions within his company – and performed some himself – and shielded the perpetrators from consequences.