The ongoing controversy surrounding Diablo Immortal has been met with a response from Blizzard, with the mobile game’s director speaking out after his prior comments regarding its microtransactions were labeled “disingenuous.”
Diablo Immortal has been widely criticized for its heavy monetization, which includes the purchasing of Legendary Gems that are not obtainable through regular gameplay. These gems offer gameplay boosts, leading to criticisms that the multiplayer game is pay-to-win.
However, previous comments made by director Wyatt Cheng stated that “there is no way to acquire or rank up gear using money,” which while technically true given that gems do not count as gear, caused players to point out how misleading that claim was.
Blizzard’s response to the Diablo Immortal controversy
Cheng’s previous comments regarding gear not being purchasable were unearthed by Zizaran, a Twitch streamer and Diablo Partner. Cheng’s comments were posted to the r/Diablo subreddit, with him responding to concerns and criticisms by definitively stating that ranking up and obtaining gear was not possible with money.
Zizaran posted the below tweet to his followers…
What happened in 4 months? Or are the gems not considered gear? pic.twitter.com/d39rnQadk9
— Zizaran 🇳🇴 (@Zizaran) June 4, 2022
…which received the following response from Cheng:
Not being able to buy gear (the 12 slots) or XP remains important to the team. For what it’s worth I appreciate you checking out the game. I look forward to your PoE content and guides which I’ve always enjoyed.
— Wyatt Cheng (@candlesan) June 4, 2022
However, Zizaran pointed out how Cheng’s comments had led many to believe that a character’s power couldn’t be affected by purchaseable items, noting the variety of things you can buy that do so in the final game, including extra chests after dungeons and the Battle Pass:
The post you made come across and disingenuous and disappointing to people that have been fans of blizzard for such a long time, and it makes it matter a lot less important if you cant "literally" buy gear when you "basically" can buy power anyway
— Zizaran 🇳🇴 (@Zizaran) June 4, 2022
Cheng concluded by saying that Zizaran’s comments were “totally fair criticism” but that he feels Blizzard were upfront about Legendary Crests and Legendary Gems, and that his original post was in direct response to a comment about gear being purchasable with real money.
Anyways, appreciate you highlighting this post, as I can see it appears misleading. We've been pretty forward that Legendary Crests -> Legendary Gems well before I made that post so I hope from a holistic perspective you can see I wasn't trying to hide anything. Thanks again Ziz.
— Wyatt Cheng (@candlesan) June 4, 2022
Players who are disappointed in Diablo Immortal’s microtransactions won’t find much solace in them being used for gems rather than gear, even if it gives Blizzard a loophole to defend the game’s monetization. Considering it has recently made headlines for its abysmal Metacritic user scores and a streamer’s $4,000 failed mission to purchase a rare Legendary Gem, it remains to be seen if this will have done more damage to Blizzard’s reputation than it was worth.
