While it was supposed to debut on June 23 in China, taking advantage of the fact that the local government has recently resumed validating the release of new games in this territory, the public has been informed that the launch will not take place. Thursday. Officially, this postponement is justified by the need to optimize the game so that it works best on a larger number of devices.
As Reuters explains, this postponement may also stem from another recent event, namely the banishment until further notice of the game’s Weibo account (the Chinese Twitter) which would have had the little joke too much to against Chinese President Xi Jinping. The same kind of reference to Winnie the Pooh (character to which Xi Jinping is compared by his detractors) for which a game like Devotion suffered the wrath of the Chinese authorities.
Diablo Immortal had already seen more than 15 million registrations in China last month, a big chunk of the 35 million gamers who showed interest globally. If the action of NetEase Games fell by 10% at the announcement of the postponement, the game has still enjoyed itself in the rest of the world since its release on June 2. According to initial estimates by AppMagic, free-to-play would have generated $24 million in spending in the space of 2 weeks.
Since its release, Diablo Immortal stood out by being the subject of stress relief from players who dropped its average to 0.3 on Metacritic in response to the excesses of its economic systems. To discourage players, others are putting even more heart into it, like the streamer Quin69 who had “fun” uninstalling the game and insulting Blizzard after finally obtaining his 5-star gem, not without spending for this the equivalent of 15,000 euros. “Thank you Blizzard for this authentic Diablo experience“, he summarizes on Twitter.