When the hosts of YouTube channel Bellular News crunched the numbers and figured out that it would cost players somewhere in the region of $110,000 to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal, some questioned the validity of their claims. If the experiences of Twitch streamer Quin69 are anything to go by, those doubters may have actually been right, just not in the way that some people were expecting.
The New Zealand-based streamer recently made headlines after spending nearly $4,000 in Diablo Immortal without getting a single 5/5 5-Star Legendary Gem. Despite his huge losses, however, Quin69 remains determined to get his hands on one of the rare items and continues to spend real-world money in the game, though to no avail so far. In fact, by the end of his most recent stream, he had passed yet another unfortunate and somewhat unbelievable milestone.
In the closing moments of the 13-hour-long stream, Quin69 made one final purchase, pushing his total amount spent in Diablo Immortal past the NZ$10,000 mark. Unfortunately for him, even after spending enough money to buy a half-decent secondhand car, his quest to obtain a 5/5 5-Star Legendary Gem continues. After taking a few moments to vent his frustration, he jokingly told his spectators that the road to $20,000 had now begun.
Some may be wondering how a player could spend so much money in a game without getting one of its top-tier items, particularly as most modern gacha games include a pity pull mechanic that automatically awards rare items after a certain amount of money has been spent. Funnily enough, Diablo Immortal does actually feature a pity pull mechanic of sorts. This only guarantees a?/5 5-Star Legendary Gem, though, with only a 1% chance of it being one of the 5/5 5-Star Legendary Gems that Quin69 and many other players so desperately crave.
Although it is possible to enjoy the game without spending any money, the predatory nature of Diablo Immortal's microtransactions has angered a lot of players. The game has already received thousands of negative reviews on Metacritic, leading to an average User Score of just 0.5 for the iOS version. Meanwhile, over on Reddit, some series fans are now calling for all mentions of Diablo Immortal to be banned from the official Diablo subreddit.
With all this in mind, it's difficult to see how Activision Blizzard could ever fully regain the trust of Diablo fans, even if the publisher were somehow able to rebalance Diablo Immortal to be less pay-to-win. Many series veterans have already uninstalled the free-to-play game, and with a recent job listing suggesting that Diablo 4 may have the same problem as Diablo Immortal when it finally hits store shelves, there's every chance that some of those fans may now be done with the long-running franchise for good.
Diablo Immortal is available on Mobile and PC.