A Twitch streamer and Diablo Immortal player live-streamed how he spent $15,000 getting a rare gem, deleted his account and uninstalled the game in protest.
The controversies and backlash for Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal microtransactions continued with a strange Twitch stream that took place this past weekend. New Zealand streamer, Quin69 had been trying to get a 5-star gem since the game was released on June 2, spending $25,165.57 NZD ($15,997 USD) to obtain the item. After getting the gem, Quin said, “it’s over” and uninstalled the game.
After a quick realization, he remembered to grab a quick screenshot of the gem before he announced he would ‘destroy’ the gem in protest. He technically got rid of the gem by using the 5-star gem on a common, useless 1-star item. Additionally, he left his clan and stated, “it was an honour to whale with you”, and then deleted his character completely.
He made sure he deleted everything so he would not go back to the game with ‘no regrets, even though he spent thousands already. He rounded things off on stream by saying, “F— you, f—ing Blizzard,” while sticking his middle finger up to his camera and uninstalling the app and launcher.
Quin’s final words provided commentary on the other Diablo games before inevitably deleting Diablo Immortal off his PC: “Get off my computer, you don’t even deserve to stay on it. Diablo II Resurrected, you can stay. Diablo III, you’re on thin ice, but okay, I’ll allow it. Diablo Immortal? Get the f— out of here.”
While the game has a lot to offer for a mobile game, the legendary items could only be obtained through buying legendary crests, which could be applied during Elder Rift dungeons. Then, the crests would allow the player to earn various runes and gems of differing values during Elder Rifts. So, it was not a simple transaction of buying a rare item outright—a little similar to gacha game systems.
Overall, Quin spent loads of money and time to get his first 5-star gem and he probably knew that the fact that he spent $25,000 NZD to get one 5-star gem was horrible. Keeping in mind that players could equip up to six gems on their character, Quin would spend about another $125,000 NZD to get a full set of gems. But this figure is not guaranteed since the rune and gem drops were RNG-based (Random Number Generator).
Quin posted his reaction to getting the 5-star gem on Twitter, detailing what he did. He tweeted, “I can’t believe I just looted my first 5/5 gem and it only cost me $25,165.57 NZD. Thanks @Blizzard_Ent @DiabloImmortal for this authentic diablo experience.” Despite content creators displaying the financially troubling tactics from Blizzard with microtransactions, the game has continued to grow with more players spending money on the game.
Figures reported that Diablo Immortal has over 10 million players and has earned about $24 million dollars in revenue. It has become one of the highest-earning mobile games in Blizzard’s history next to its card game, Hearthstone. Diablo Immortal is available on Mobile and PC.
