Blizzard says more than 10 million people have installed Diablo Immortal, but not how much money it’s made from its microtransactions.
Even when games are met with angry backlashes from audiences, that doesn’t always translate to a failed product. The Last Of Us Part 2, for example, was met with some of the loudest complaints we’ve ever seen and it’s sold over 10 million units.
It’s a similar scenario for Diablo Immortal. Chances are you’ve heard the many complaints arrayed against it, for its use of microtransactions and a design philosophy that only encourages players to spend more and more money on it.
Despite receiving a user score of 0.5 on Metacritic, making it the lowest rated Blizzard Entertainment game on the site, it’s performing incredibly well and has apparently enjoyed the biggest launch in the entire Diablo series.
This comes from Blizzard itself, which says that the game has been installed over 10 million times since it launched on June 2.
It doesn’t specify whether this is just for the mobile version or includes the PC release, since the latter is currently still in beta.
While this sounds like good news for Blizzard and Diablo Immortal, it’s important to remember that launches for mobile games are very different compared to PC/console launches.
For starters, Diablo Immortal isn’t a premium release; it’s free-to-play. It costs nothing to download and there’s no guarantee anyone’s going to play it afterwards or, more importantly, spend money on it.
There’s no guarantee that all 10 million people who downloaded it are still playing. Even if you ignore the pay-to-win criticisms, some players may have tried it for a couple hours, decided it wasn’t their cup of tea, and uninstalled it.
Blizzard hasn’t shared how much
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