The matter was further clarified by a message shared on the Diablo Immortal subreddit, purportedly from a Blizzard support agent. “Unfortunately players in the Netherlands and Belgium will not be able to install Diablo Immortal due to the countries’ gambling restrictions,” it says. “The loot boxes in the game are against the law in your country, so unless gambling restrictions change the game will not be released in the Netherlands and Belgium.”
The message also warns that it’s illegal for citizens of Belgium and the Netherlands to download the game from a different country, and even if you don’t get busted for your scofflaw ways, you might get banned—although “in similar situations in the past where RNG loot boxes were against the law in certain countries we did not ban any players for it,” the rep added.
oh wow - this game just sounds better and better.
Ah, so random mobs are ‘loot boxes’ now?
Nah, silly me, I bet it has real money loot boxes, doesn’t it? I mean, why be surprised?
No - the laws are related to gambling, so, money is involved.
indeed.
It has been out in CA for awhile.
most people who have already played the game are confused by the loot box news since apparently it doesn’t really have loot boxes. haven’t played myself so will have to wait and see what they mean though.
gambling can be gambling without being money fwiw. this is a pretty common misconception people have.
In the laws in Netherlands? Are you sure about that? What would be the idea to protect then?
I’m also a little confused but mainly because I thought EA had won their appeal on lootboxes in at least one of those countries.
their law might very well say it has to involve money, my point was that the definition of gambling doesn’t have to involve money which is what it sounded like you were saying. anti-gambling laws can also be about the addictive aspect of it not just the actual risk of money. as an extreme example of how it is definitely gambling without money look at russian roulette. Someone with a gambling addiction can have a hard time even playing with credits in a game since the same mindset happens.
I’m just curious what their actual lootbox equiv in the game is since so many people who have played the game seem confused since it seems to not have lootboxes. Maybe the launch adds them.
Impressions/reviews coming in now.
Playing now on IOS. Game runs fine without a hitch. Got through the tutorial and a bunch of rewards. Phone is still too small to play long term but the controls work really well. Just too old to game on such a small device. Will switch to PC when it comes out.
per article :
" The gem system has enough similarities to loot boxes that Activision Blizzard won’t release Immortal in countries with laws against that kind of monetization. It’s also a setup that rewards “whaling.” In other words, the players willing to spend nearly endless amounts of money on the game will be the most powerful."
and
" How you will feel about Immortal’s monetization will depend on what you want to get out of it. You can safely ignore all the systems I mentioned if all you want is to play through the game’s story and level your favorite classes. But just how much you’ll need to spend to participate in the game’s endgame is hard for me to say. Going into tomorrow’s release, the consensus among Immortal’s community is that the answer is a lot."
Link to video about how pay to win it is :
Interest pretty much gone.
Unless you are selling at the very high mobile price points, like Final Fantasy stuff and full PC conversions, it seems the only financially viable way to make a AAA-equivalent game on mobile is this sort of monetization.
I don’t necessarily care about their monetization taken in isolation. The real question isn’t whether the game is P2W, but a) can it be played entirely single-player, so the whales don’t impact me and more importantly, b) how much impact has the purchasable items and services had on the base game?
It’s B that really matters.
For example, in a non “live service” game like DIablo 3, the endgame is all about accumulating blood shards from adventure mode to gamble for specific legendaries and then doing greater rifts for loot, more blood shards, and to upgrade legendary gems.
So lets say you’re doing level 40 grifts and you get 200 blood shards per run, in pure Diablo 3.
Imagine if D3 were a P2W live service game. They would sell blood shards in their shop. OK, fine, no skin off my nose, I’ll never buy any and I’m single-player. The question is this-- how many shards drop off those L40 grifts now? Is it still 200, or do they drop it to 15 to incentivize the cash shop?
And that is the problem. Not that other people can buy their way to power, but how it impacts every aspect of base design for me. Offer “QoL” in the shop, like double XP potions? I don’t care, except… wait, how much time does it take me to level? Does it feel really slow? I wonder why that is?
Sell cool mounts and costumes and outfits in the shop? I don’t care, except… wait, I’m still using a brown horse, and there’s no way to look cool! (This example is from Elder Scrolls Online, which definitely suffers from that problem.)
Yeah, even if the monetization is unintrusive in the sense that it doesn’t outright block your progress and you aren’t going to be playing alongside people who have paid, all of the game’s systems are going to be balanced around the assumption that you will pay at least a little bit.
Maybe the gameplay is really good and it’s no big deal to have to run twenty rifts instead of one for the next upgrade. But I’ve played enough games to see those systems laid bare, and I’m constantly irked by the knowledge that they are tweaked to be balanced against me.
I mean, I’m still gonna try it on PC. But I can envision the wall I’ll hit when my options are to run rifts with almost no progression or to pay twenty-five bucks.
Yep, I plan to play through the campaign and then immediately uninstall. No “battle pass” or microtransactions for me.
Quoting just this for brevity, as I 100% agree with everything you wrote. The worst part is even if (as in your example) they keep blood shards at 200 for a normal/unpaid run when the option is there to buy more, you always feel like you should be earning more without paying. It’s a shitty deal when you run out of them and feel that urge to just drop $5 on 1,000. It’s gross.
I’m still not seeing any reason beyond sheet novelty I should play this instead of D3 on Switch.