Diablo Immortal whale faces $35k in 'orb debt' after Blizzard deletes fraudulent items

gamesradar.com:

Blizzard has taken action against in-game currency for Diablo Immortal purchased on third-party sites, leaving some whales with tens of thousands of dollars worth of in-game debt.

Eternal Orbs make up the primary form of currency you can purchase in Diablo Immortal. Officially, you can buy it in bundles ranging from $1 USD for 60 orbs up to $100 USD for 7200. As a report from PCGamesN (opens in new tab) explains, third-party sites are willing to sell orbs at steep discounts over the official prices, though their stock of the in-game currency is often derived from fraudulent means like glitches or purchases made with stolen credit cards.

With the launch of Diablo Immortal's Season Four update (opens in new tab), it appears that Blizzard has deleted a whole bunch of currency that was purchased via these third-party sites. As numerous reports (opens in new tab) from users (opens in new tab) on social media (opens in new tab) can attest, that's left players who've spent big on unofficial currency purchases with negative orb balances. Not only would affected players have to rebuy their way through all that debt to start making more in-game purchases, they're also unable to join parties or group activities until they regain a positive balance. It's basically a soft ban.

One of the most extreme examples of this is a player called Shia, who's shared a screenshot (opens in new tab) of a -2,491,025 orb balance - which, as PCGN estimates, would take about $35k to pay off through legitimate in-game purchases.

Many players are less than sympathetic to big spenders who've poured thousands into third-party orb purchases, and are pretty much just enjoying karmic retribution.

Still, it's not as if Diablo Immortal's microtransactions have