Diablo Immortal whales in ‘orb debt’ will be banned from PvP

pcgamesn.com:

Some Diablo Immortal whales – players who have spent large sums of money on the fantasy game – will receive PvP bans after Blizzard revokes transactions made through third-party sellers. The community was introduced to the concept of Diablo Immortal orb debt after microtransaction purchases made for the free PC game through alternative vendors were removed from players’ accounts, leaving them with negative Eternal Orb values.

Players left with a negative balance on their account are unable to join parties or participate in most group activities, including dungeons, elder rifts, and using the marketplace, until they have ‘repaid’ the value by purchasing additional Eternal Orbs through the in-game store. However, players were surprised to find that the restrictions didn’t extend to most PvP activities such as Battlegrounds. This means that these players have been able to take advantage of their supposedly ill-gotten gains in competitive multiplayer modes. But that’s all about to change.

Responding to a post on the game’s subreddit, Diablo community manager Adam ‘PezRadar’ Fletcher says that the team has applied a hotfix “restricting these players from Battlegrounds and other PvP activities.” It’s unclear at the time of writing how widespread this restriction is and whether it extends to endgame activities such as the Diablo Immortal Rite of Exile, which determines who will become the active Immortals faction on a server. We have reached out to Blizzard for additional details, and will update if we hear more specifics.

One Diablo Immortal whale affected by the clampdown asked Blizzard for their character to be rolled back instead of facing a roughly $34,000 USD bill to pay off their account’s negative orb balance.