Diablo Immortal hits 30 million players, estimated to have raked in over $100 million
The microtransactions didn’t put the wider audience off.
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Diablo Immortal has sparked controversy among elements of Blizzard’s audience ever since it was first announced. Themonetisation model sparked a brutal backlash, stopped it being releasedin Belgium and the Netherlands, and Blizzard had to rush out a promise thatDiablo 4 won’t be monetized the same way.
But the thing is, Diablo Immortal sure seems to have made some people happy. The last stats Blizzard provided on the game was that it had been downloaded byover 15 million players in two weeks, earning around $24 million.
Two months since launch, the game now boasts over 30 million players.
30M mortals and plenty of demons slain. 🔥Log in to claim your rewards. pic.twitter.com/pmfuXBYTp3July 30, 2022
The player numbers are coming from an official channel, butmobile market analyst SensorTowerhas also just published a report about the game’s success, in which it estimates the title has now raked-in over $100 million globally. SensorTower’s data is generally accurate but figures like this are extrapolating from public information and sample sets of users, so bear that in mind. These figures will also have received a massive boost from the game’s Chinese launch on 25 July, where it instantly shot to the top of download charts.
Whatever the precise stats, there’s no doubting that Diablo Immortal has a lot of players, and is making a lot of money. This game is a hit. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra recentlywent to bat for the game, saying that the criticism was not reflective of wider reaction: something that these figures would seem to back up.
“When we think about monetization, at the very highest level it was, ‘How do we give a free Diablo experience to hundreds of millions of people, where they can literally do 99.5% of everything in the game?'” says Ybarra.
“The monetization comes in at the end game. The philosophy was always to lead with great gameplay and make sure that hundreds of millions of people can go through the whole campaign without any costs. From that standpoint, I feel really good about it as an introduction to Diablo.”
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Blizzard says the “vast majority” of players haven’t spent money on the game, and that 50% of Immortal’s players are new to Blizzard games.
PCG’s Tyler Colp spent some time with the game, and felt it was moredesigned to exploit your love of Diablothan being a great Diablo. It is, at least, responsible for this headline: Diablo Immortal player uses premium currency shenanigans to turn old WoW tokens intoa whale-killing Necromancer.
Rich is a games journalist with 15 years’ experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as “[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike.”
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