It’s not going to be a big surprise for those who follow the news of big games online, Diablo Immortal will not be officially released in these two European countries, and it is illegal for players to download them from another country like France to play there afterwards for example.
The announcement comes from Reddit, you can find it in full below. What makes it quite predictable is that Lost Ark recently ran into the same problem. Belgian and Dutch legislation affiliate lootboxes with gambling, in order to protect vulnerable players and minors. Games are forced to remove this type of content to be legally available, as Overwatch had to do. Activision Blizzard does not seem to have any intention of doing the same with Diablo Immortal at this time.
The precise reasons behind the prohibition of Diablo Immortal in these regions, is not exactly specified, since the monetization affects different aspects. But it is probably the fact of being able to buy keys with the premium currency, Platinum, which is responsible for this. Since they then allow you to open special chests in a vault. Hiding the lootboxes in a dungeon rather than in a menu was obviously not enough.
What are the risks for those who use a VPN or the APK?
As you probably know, there are many ways to circumvent the online gambling ban in Europe. Union heavily restricts geo-blocking, so by creating a French Battle.net account and using a VPN for the initial download, it’s easy to override. Downloading the Diablo Immortal APK on Android is also a popular way to circumvent such restrictions.
But of course, all this is not without risks. As the official message mentions, they could theoretically ban players from these two countries who play Diablo Immortal illegally, however they have never taken the initiative to do so in their other games in the past, and it is unlikely let them do so in the future. You just need to be aware that this possibility exists. For example, if the legislation gets tougher and Blizzard decides to take the risk of banning suspicious accounts. But that’s completely hypothetical, since they already fail to ban hordes of bots on all of their other games.