Diablo Immortal's pay-to-win schemes are not exactly a secret these days. It's practically one of the biggest talking points for Activision Blizzard's new free-to-play MMORPG. And it's also no secret that it can make gamers do things that will just leave you scratching your head, wondering, "why?"
Well, that's just what this Twitch streamer from New Zealand did. Streamer Quin69, according to GameRant, somehow found the strength to actually delete a character he spent around $25K NZD (around $15.7k US) on to upgrade. Quin spent that kind of money to get a very elusive 5/5-star Legendary Gem, the in-game currency you need in Diablo Immortal to upgrade your character.
The Twitch streamer tweeted about his experience to Activision Blizzard in an obviously sarcastic way after seeing Diablo Immortal's pay-to-win system firsthand:
After doing so, he deleted the character he spent so much money on and uninstalled the game from his PC as a protest. He also urged fellow Twitch streamers to do the same in order to protest the game's rampant monetization. However, it also kind of served as an experiment to see what kind of financial damage Diablo Immortal can do to folks who get addicted to it - considering that under all the microtransactions, numerous reviews considered it a good enough game.
Either way, this is more or less in line with projections about how much money you'll really spend on Immortal if you have the desire to do so. But this isn't even close to what you have to spend on the game if you want to max your character out.
As shared by The Gamer, anyone looking to upgrade their character in Immortal fully will have to spend an insane $110,000. Yes, you read that right. You'll need to fork over cash that's over twice the amount a well-paid employee in the US makes in a year on a video game. This is just unacceptable on so many levels, but also not too weird in free-to-play games as a whole.
Read also: Diablo IV's Hype Was 'Damaged' By 'Shallow' Diablo Immortal, Says Asmongold
Diablo Immortal: Activision Blizzard's New Cash Cow
Say what you want about Immortal, but all free-to-play games have to make their developers/publishers money somehow. So while it is indeed a predatory business practice, it is after still pretty legal. And Activision Blizzard has already reaped massive rewards from their MMORPG.
PCMag reports that within two weeks after launch, Diablo Immortal has already earned over $24 million in microtransactions. That's an insane amount of money, considering the very short timeframe. This money is only beaten by what Hearthstone earned, a game that's far older (it launched way back in 2014). So if Quin is protesting the game's microtransactions, it's not really doing anything to convince developers and publishers to stop making these games.
More data about the earnings reveal which regions spent the most. Americans were the biggest spenders in Immortal as they comprised 43% of all revenue. South Korea came in second place at 23%; Canada, Germany, and Japan had 8, 6, and 3%, respectively, and other unmentioned markets accounted for the remaining 17% (via VideoGamesChronicle).
Money, money, money.