The outrage about Diablo Immortal is entering the next round: After the developers of the free mobile role-playing game had to struggle with loud Pay2Win allegations in the past few days, chief developer Wyatt Cheng has now commented on the subject on Twitter. But with that he must have done himself and his team a disservice.
In our review of Diablo Immortal, you can read why the offshoot of the popular action role-playing game series, originally developed for mobile devices, is giving us headaches:
more on the subject
The test for Diablo Immortal pushes me to my limits
Chief developer defends Diablo Immortal with quibbles
What’s the matter? The Twitch streamer and YouTuber Zizaranwho in particular in the Path-of-Exilescene enjoys an excellent reputation, rediscovered a Reddit post by the chief developer from early January 2022 over the weekend. In this post, Cheng explained that in Diablo Immortal There is no way to purchase or upgrade equipment with money.
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The developer defended exactly this statement on Twitter, stating that he did not see legendary gems as part of the equipment:
link to Twitter content
Hey Ziz, I’ve been pretty frank in many interviews (although obviously not in this post) that gear is the twelve item slots. In many interviews I have also stated clearly that money can be used to upgrade gems and legendary gems.
I’m sorry this wasn’t clear. Not being able to buy gear (the twelve slots) or XP remains important to the team.
The big problem: It’s true that you can’t buy weapons, armor parts and accessories and have to loot them in the game in a classic way. But it’s also true that legendary gems play a hugely important role in character progression.
The legendary gems not only deliver enormously powerful effects, but also huge damage and life bonuses. However, since they aren’t directly attached, just socketed into other pieces of gear, Cheng defends his claim that money can’t buy gear.
For us a hair-raising quibble: Even though Blizzard doesn’t sell any gear, Diablo Immortal gives you a lot of power and progression for real money. And this power is only available after a long period of daily play for Free2Play players who don’t want to invest a small fortune.
We have analyzed the Pay2Win problem with the legendary gems for you in the following article:
Diablo Immortal
100,000 dollars for a strong hero – is the excitement justified?
But there is more: Chen writes on Twitter that he dislikes misleading information
because people claim that you can buy gear in Diablo Immortal:
link to Twitter content
He seems to have forgotten that he previously fooled many people himself with his quibbles, while the most powerful items can only be obtained from real-money loot boxes.
His notorious counteracts such annoying remarks Do you guys not have phones?
from 2018, which caused a massive shitstorm at the time, almost harmless.
