In the moment that Diablo Immortal was announced at BlizzCon 2018, a lone spectator stood with the makers of the mobile game that is Diablo 4 Gold free to play to question: "Is this an out-of-season April Fools' joke?" The general outrage and mockery ensued from Diablo Immortal up until its recent release.
The vitriol hasn't abated since. However, it's not the quick-witted reaction to disappointing announcements or the fact that the game is playable to mobile users. It's the result from Diablo Immortal's microtransactions which even though they're a bit shady, were not made up from thin air.
Diablo Immortal is doused in various in-game transactionsthe proverbial wall of sales with overinflated percentages that convince players to believe that the more you buy, the more they save. This is a common practice on the mobile market for decades, regardless of how different the style of presentation might have appeared.
It's the case with Genshin Impact's Genesis Crystal store, where buying huge amounts of currency can grant players an even greater amount of exactly the same currency. The same thing happens in the case of Lapis -the currency that is paid found in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius -that entices players with "bonus" currencies that can reach the hundreds of thousands after purchasing packs of currency worth up to $100.
"A popular tactic used by mobile games, or any game with microtransactions involves complication of currencies," an anonymous employee employed in the mobile game industry told me recently. "Like, if I spent $1, I might get two types of cheap Diablo IV Gold currencies (gold and jewels for instance).