Diablo Immortal brought $100M to developers in less than two months | Hacker News Reader

Diablo Immortal brought $100M to developers in less than two months

gagadget.com

44 pointsolalonde38 comments

I truly wish journalists would learn to not refer to companies that produce video games as "developers".

No software engineer is getting a bonus because the microtransaction they implemented is getting purchased more often.

I guess it makes sense to refer to products as product of a key role (e.g. "Tarantino's new movie" or "Dreamworks' new movie"), but I feel like titles like OP's just further the public misconception that a regular developer has any input into their product, or financial profit from their work.

(I am aware that the HN audience might be used to bonuses and stock options etc.. These are very not a thing outside a few giant US companies in my experience.)

Both companies that develop games and individual programmers are correctly called developers, and have been since the start of gaming.

Those companies develop games. And for a long time, almost no programmer develops a whole game - they provide code, artists provide art, producers direct, investors fund, and so on.

So while a large group develops the game, most of which aren't generally called developers, programmers have shrunk in scope from when they did do most of the work (say in the 70s and early 80s).

If anything, game companies are more correctly labeled developer, and programmer should be programmer.

For example, search for top game developers... Not an individual in the list... Such uses go back as far as gaming.

The word simply has multiple meanings.

It’s a thing here in Australia. 1/3 of my total comp

> I feel like titles like OP's just further the public misconception that a regular developer has any input into their product (...)

As someone whose job has a very heavy programming component, I want to ask: ".... Don't they?"

> No software engineer is getting a bonus because the microtransaction they implemented is getting purchased more often

This isn’t necessarily true. Blizzard bonus compensation is tied to game performance through profit sharing. So if the games that year does well, the bonuses are going to be higher too.

$100M is a lot for a free-to-play mobile game clearly, but for permanently tainting the Diablo brand it may not be that great a trade.

We will see how Diablo 4 will perform but I seriously doubt this mobile game saga will affect even 0.1% of sales. People were genuinely excited by the trailer Blizzard put out back in June.

>permanently tainting the Diablo brand it may not be that great a trade.

I'm sure that blizzard will learn their lesson. First the real money auction house,Warcraft 3 reforged and now this.

They certainly learned, it just wasn't the lesson I hoped they would learn.

Big gaming companies learned quite a few years ago via various microtransaction practices that the market has expanded so rapidly that the gamers that complain about these things are a minority that can basically be ignored now since the vast majority of players basically only started playing after insidious monetization practices have been normalized so it doesn't feel wrong to them. Why cater to old users who would only spend 60$ on a game and complain when you can just cater to all the new users who love to spend money on microtransactions by making the geek equivalent to Madden or Fifa and print money?

CEO just want this year bonus, maybe one more and blizzard fans can explode themselves.

no one cares what will happen in the next 5 years to the company. bad incentives

I both agree with you and also think that Path of Exile ate their cake years ago and that hardcore playerbase no longer orbits around Diablo.

That horse armor from Elder Scrolls was truly a pandora's box

Todd is both the cause of, and solution to, all of our problems

The fixed point in time that send is hurtling into this doomed timeline.

Looking at reviews, Diablo Immortal doesn't seem to qualify as a game though.

It's more a highly addictive (and slightly dangerous) form of gambling, and probably should be (will be) (has been) regulated to bits.

I'm just hoping said regulation doesn't end up ruining regular games too much.

The whole mobile gaming industry today is just "casinos for kids", imo. Add with the knowledge of psychology they know precisely how to develop an addiction in their users.

I blame the unconstrained capitalism for this. "Money rule everything" just can't lead to something good in a long run.

Exactly. I support private enterprise but I recognize it has limits. The market is going to do things that are profitable, which may or may not be things society considers good. When that difference becomes unacceptably large, government should step in.

For example, it may not be profitable to provide mail service to rural homes, but it is good the US Post Office does so, because people who live in the boonies deserve to fully participate in society.

It should be forbidden, is my opinion. Like casinos should be illegal these kinds of games should be illegal.

The line between these gacha games and slot machines is getting thinner by the day. How many RPG elements do I need to add to a slot machine in order to get them installed legally into arcades? Or by schools?

Highly agreed, on both counts.

I don’t have any kind of pre-existing moral aversion to gambling, I just think that in the form of casinos and video games (among others), it’s too harmful to both individuals and society to get a green-light from the government.

I am pretty sure that most of that $100M is people making ""content"" with catchy titles like "I spent $$$$$1,000,000 on Diablo Immortal"

Ya know all those videos from big gamers like asmongold or whoever the F people watch (I don't)? They spend money on this stuff to make content just to rip on it to make more content about it and then to do a video saying they are done with it... Just to probably play it more and spend more without talking about it anymore in public.

While they think they are doing a service or maybe aren't spending "their" money on it or some "big brain" BS... They are feeding the machine. People will play the game and spend money for whatever reason.

I played the game for, I dunno, 3 weeks? Didn't spend a dime because I don't have a dime to spend and even if I did have dimes to spend I still wouldn't because I enjoyed what I played for free and there wasn't any aspect of the game that even remotely made me feel compelled to spend money on it. I'm not even some dopamine fasting really strict person. I'm high risk for this kind of stuff, well, I should be. How in the world they can't get someone with ADHD and impulse issues to not spend money is beyond me but I guess their psychological profiling works best on the bell curve and not the edges.

It's not even a bad game if you've played mobile action combat games before. It's literally like other ones except it has diablo lore and skins on it. It's a streamlined for a phone and modern times game and I'm not even talking about how they made money as streamlined, I'm talking about auto walking and other time savers that are just in the game for free. Normal mobile modern niceties. It's a game, it exists, it's not bad nor is it good, especially next to other mobile games it is maybe like I dunno a 75% in that aspect. The only reason it gets shit on is because people get all bent outta shape about their favorite BRAND getting damaged in some way maybe which is silly. You don't own the brand, the old games still exist, play those it's fine.

Does anyone even remember "Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire"? I'm sure that made money too.

I was a huge fan of FF but haven't kept up to date since X or so. What's the story with XV?

The source for this article is SensorTower Store Intelligence, which claims to have "download and revenue data for nearly all mobile apps available in the App Store and GooglePlay". How are they getting revenue data when it's not publicly available (to my knowledge)?

Is 100M for a game from Blizzard supposed to sound impressive?

At $70 per copy, a game only has to sell a couple of million copies to clear $100M, right?

I feel like a brand new Diablo game should easily clear a couple of million copies in the first couple of months.

The main difference is the long tail for the AAA title versus free to play model, but if it's only making 100M right now I doubt the long tail is good for Diablo Immortal.

Yes, yes it is impressive.

Immortal is a free game that’s pay to win. The $100M is from micro transactions. That is impressive, and also sad.

Lot of money in gambling addicts, sorry, “whales”.

At $0 per game, the current income of $100mil speaks very well to Diablo Immortal's long tail.

Keep in mind it’s tens of millions of dollars of recurring monthly revenue. While first month sales are inflated compared to the average, it would be just as notable if their monthly revenue were to fall below 8 digits in the months (or years) to come, and would be treated as evidence of a major blunder on Blizzard’s part. Unlike buy-to-play games, whose launch sales are the majority of its lifetime revenue.

Besides, it was never an either-or thing for Blizzard. They’re currently positioned to launch Diablo 4 while continuing to milk Immortal, and profit handsomely from both. The backlash from “core” gamers is only encouragement at this point, telling them that they’ve managed to tap a brand new market instead of cannibalizing their traditional business.

How many people would pay 70$ for a mobile game? I'm thinking way less than those you can get hooked on microtransactions.

A lot. They wouldn’t spend $70 for 1 item. They will buy a few packs here and there and that’s $100 spent and they didn’t even know.

My kids did that. I gave them a debit card with some allowance and next thing I know, $50 was spent on a micro transaction. $5, $7 and then a few more clicks, $50.

Google policy is they only refund the last transaction 1 time for an app.

Diablo Immortal seems so, forgettable, just like its Diablo 3 counterpart, but worse.

LOVED Diablo 2.

As far as ambience and immersion go, possibly one of the best games I ever played.

D3 was really good after they reversed the real money auction house, IMO. And give Path of Exile a try sometime.

Otherwise they also recently remade D2 if you wanna give it a go again.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't play any more. A few years ago I had to put a stop to it due to how much time I was spending. I can control myself not to play at all, but if I play a bit I can't control myself not to spend all my waking hours on it...

I totally get what you mean! They can get addicting for sure.

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