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What seemed to be a standard BlizzCon, turned into a messy affair after the announcement of Diablo Immortal for the mobile. The severe backlash from the fans and community have turned the situation sour for Blizzard. In this article, we take a look at how the drama unfolds.
The community’s anger seemed to originate from a statement made by Blizzard that it had “multiple Diablo projects in the works,”. This gave way to speculation that Diablo 4 or a remaster of the classic Diablo, was going to be announced during BlizzCon. Blizzard later clarified that they would not “be ready to announce all of our projects”, in a way telling their fans not to get their hopes up. Unfortunately, with no direct statement that there will be no major Diablo title, fans still hoped for one.
The reveal of Diablo Immortal at BlizzCon was nothing short of a disaster. Silence from the crowd and barbed questions filled the Q&A session as fans were left in a state of disbelief at what was announced. The following backlash became a storm across the Internet.
To add fuel to the fire, the announcement that the game is a collaboration of both Blizzard and NetEase was met with negativity. UI and gameplay similarities between Diablo Immortal and NetEase’s Endless of God as well as Crusader of Light were pointed out by fans, drawing even more criticism as fans started to call Diablo Immortal a reskinned version of NetEase’s action RPG.
Calls for boycotts and petitions for the game to be cancelled appeared on Diablo’s official forum while threads on the subreddit were calling it “a disrespect to Blizzard employees” as well as “a slap in the face”. The dislikes continue to rage across different social media platforms like Youtube as the community continues to make their reactions known. There were also accusations that Blizzard is removing dislikes from Diablo Immortal’s cinematic and gameplay trailers.
According to executive producer and Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham in his interview with Kotaku, he admitted that Blizzard was expecting some sort of backlash, but “not to this degree”. “We know our audience here is passionately PC- and console-focused,” he said. “We’ve also seen this before.
We saw a similar response when we announced that we were bringing Diablo to console, and we saw a similar response to the announcement of Hearthstone.” Adham stated in his interview with Digital Trends that Blizzard fully knew that the fans were expecting Diablo 4.
He further clarified the similarities between Diablo Immortal and NetEase’s old game in the interview with Kotaku by stating, “In the East, that control method is becoming ubiquitous, and it’s becoming ubiquitous because it’s very natural, and it feels great. Less so in the West, but we’re now starting to see some games that are bringing that mechanic to the West. So it’s us taking inspiration from some of the work they’ve done already.”
The drama surrounding Diablo Immortal became a PR nightmare for Blizzard. Nothing says more than the silence from the audience after it was announced. It is disheartening to see Diablo Immortal receive this amount of criticism before its release especially with a milestone that comes with it. As a massively multiplayer online action RPG (MMOARPG), the game’s release will see the franchise take its first steps into the genre which may open new possibilities for the franchise as a whole.
