Blizzard really wants you to know that there’s no pay-to-win in Diablo 4

polygon.com:

In a new developer blog, Blizzard has gone to great pains to reiterate something it had already said: Diablo 4’s monetization will not include any way to buy power or gameplay advantages.

In extremely careful and definitive language from director of product Kegan Clark, the blog lays out how Diablo4 will be monetized (beyond the sale of future expansion packs). The in-game shop will sell only one thing: cosmetic enhancements for your character.

There will also be a battle pass-style Season Pass, which refreshes alongside the in-game seasons. Season passes will have a free tier and a paid tier, but again, the paid tier will only award cosmetic items, or premium currency which can be used to buy further cosmetic items from the shop. Selling anything affecting gameplay is explicitly and repeatedly ruled out by Clark.

This deliberate messaging is surely a result of the controversy that has engulfed Diablo Immortal. The mobile game, co-developed with NetEase and released earlier this year, is well made but has attracted consternation for the exploitative and deceptive depths of its monetization, which effectively paywalls drop rates for the game’s most powerful items, and makes the cost of maxing out a character prohibitive. Blizzard is clearly keen to try to avoid Diablo 4 being tarred with the same brush.

But, while the language of this blog is likely a response to Diablo Immortal’s reception, it’s unlikely that the same is true of the game’s monetization design. A similar controversy over the real-money auction house included in Diablo 3 at launch taught Blizzard that its players would not accept any monetization of Diablo’s prized item game in a premium, mainline release. Diablo Immortal is an exception that was developed