8/25/2023 0 Comments Diablo immortal is reskinned![]() ![]() That practice is widespread across the mobile gaming market, but it also indicates that NetEase doesn't spend much time developing new games. Earlier this year, Korean publisher Bluehole sued NetEase for cloning features from its popular battle royale game PUBG in two titles. Unfortunately, NetEase is also notorious for cloning popular games. Those two facts made it an ideal partner for the development of Diablo Immortal. It's also the second largest mobile game maker in China after Tencent. NetEase licenses many of Blizzard's hit titles - including World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, and Overwatch - for the mainland Chinese market. Activision probably expected the first mobile Diablo to become a new pillar of growth for the unit. This setback could throttle the growth of Activision Blizzard's "Mobile and Ancillary" revenue, which rose 9% year over year during the first half of 2018 and accounted for 29% of the company's top line. That strategy seemed sound on paper, but it completely overlooked the fact that most of Diablo's fans were dedicated PC gamers. Just as Activision launched its mobile versions of Call of Duty with Chinese gaming giant Tencent, Blizzard worked with NetEase to bring Diablo to mobile devices. The suggestion that the game is a reskinned version of NetEase's older game merely adds insult to injury.īlizzard likely pivoted Diablo to mobile devices to complement Activision's push into the mobile market, which includes mobile Call of Duty games and King's Candy Crush titles. That's why gamers responded poorly to Diablo Immortal, a free-to-play mobile-only game which will be monetized with microtransactions. Many of Blizzard's fans also expected to pay full price for a complete game, instead of playing a free-to-play game saturated with microtransactions. It also successfully reached console users by launching its hit PC shooter, Overwatch, on the Xbox One and PS4.īut despite these successes, the PC was considered Blizzard's primary platform, and esports tournaments featuring the PC versions of Starcraft and Overwatch reinforced that reputation. Many of those games were launched on consoles as well, but they generally fared poorly due to limited control schemes that were poorly suited for real-time strategy games, complex dungeon crawlers, and PC RPGs (role-playing games).īlizzard scored its first mobile hit with Hearthstone, its free-to-play card game for mobile devices and PCs. How the Diablo debacle hurts Activision Blizzardīlizzard, which merged with Activision over a decade ago, created the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo franchises, which were all PC-centric titles. In a subsequent interview with Kotaku, Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham admitted that the company expected some backlash against Diablo Immortal, but "not to this degree." Unfortunately, the fierce pushback against the game strongly indicates that Blizzard alienated many longtime fans of the two-decade old series. Some gamers also claimed that Diablo Immortal was merely a reskinned version of NetEase's mobile title Endless of God (also known as Eternal Realm ). Cheng's dismissive response - in which he asked, "Do you guys not have phones?" - was also slammed as being tone deaf across social media. Diablo Immortal principal designer Wyatt Cheng was even booed by the audience at BlizzCon after announcing that the game wouldn't be launched on PCs.
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