Naturally, the president for Blizzard Mike Ybarra has defended the microtransactions in Diablo Immortal which has been heavily criticised by fans and critics alike. Ybarra has defended these by stating that the microtransactions allowed Blizzard to offer a “free Diablo experience to hundreds of millions of people”.

Ybarra gave the response to microtransactions in an interview with the Los Angeles Times where he defended the use of microtransactions on two points. Ybarra first stated the inclusion was necessary to offer the free Diablo experience, as well as stating that players could go through the entire campaign without spending any money and that monetisation is at the end game.

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Diablo Immortal launched on the 2nd of June on both iOS and Android devices but was met with pretty poor reception mostly thanks to its inclusion of microtransactions. As it stands, it will cost users over R1 million to actually max out a character in the game but Blizzard insists that the negative reputation against the mobile title is based on misinformation.

“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?

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.”

Either way, Diablo Immortal seems to be making back its investment as it has already made over $50 million from the microtransactions, and it’s only been available for a month.

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Source: Los Angeles Times