Imaging spending more than a down payment on a house in Diablo Immortal and then not being able to find a match…
Diablo Immortal, Blizzard's notorious out-of-season April fool's joke has gained quite the reputation. Not necessarily a good one, but because Diablo Immortal employs every pay-to-win party trick in the monetized mobile game playbook. And one player pushed the game's P2W mechanics to the limit. They spent $100k on Diablo Immortal, maxing out their character.
Don't get us wrong, Diablo: Immortal does enjoy a sustainable player-base that regularly plays and keeps coming back to the game. A lot of them love complaining about the game's p2w aspects, but they don't mind the game itself. In fact, it is the most watched mobile game on Twitch. Of course, every monetized video game with microtransactions and an in-game marketplace will have its own community of dedicated players and *ahem* whales. One such whale put the game's p2w mechanics up to the ultimate test.
Jtisallbusiness spent $100k on Diablo Immortal Gear
Diablo Immortal content creator and YouTuber jtisallbusiness decided to put the game's p2w mechanics to the test by dropping over $100k on the game's marketplace. They purchased some of the best gear in the game to level up their character. The entire idea was to "win" the game by spending a lot of money and maxing out their character's stats and abilities.
His character broke the game's matchmaking
Diablo: Immortal features a matchmaking system that depends on the player's character level and equipped items. By spending what he claims to be "over $100k" on the game, Jtisallbusiness has become the only player in his matchmaking bracket with such high-level gear. In a YouTube video titled "Should I refund 100k on Diablo Immortal?", the YouTuber describes the issue to his audience.
“I would say it’s probably around, somewhere around 48 to 72 hours somewhere in between that of only trying to queue for a Battleground and never being able to get one,” he said in the video. His character level is quite literally so high that he's not able to find a PVP game.
Jtisallbusiness considered getting a refund
They put up a Twitter poll asking their audience if they should refund their account. In their video on YouTube, they also claimed they were considering involving lawyers. According to them, they're the only player in the world with such an issue. They expressed their doubts on whether the developers will fix the issue because of this.
"I can't do things that I spent money on this character to do, and I have no time frame of when things are going to actually be fixed, or even know if things are going to be fixed because I am the only player in the entire world with this problem"
Blizzard's Response
Blizzard later responded to the streamer's video, and they appear to have changed their stance on the issue. They uploaded a follow-up video on their YouTube channel where they describe Blizzard's response in detail. The company informed the streamer that they "have approved" a fix for the issue and are working to implement it.
The streamer later dropped another video talking about how the matchmaking was fixed, thanking the community and the media for amplifying his story and bringing the issue to the developer's notice.
"I really hope that Blizzard thinks about getting a better way for players to communicate about this game. When you invest a ton of money into a game, or even if you are not investing a ton of money, you should have some sort of customer service to be able to talk about something."
Thankfully for jitsallbusiness, it ended well, with the developers fixing the matchmaking issue. Turns out, all their whaling wasn't in vain and they can comfortably lord over the game's player base with a decked-out P2W character.