When Diablo Immortal launched, pretty much everyone was united in calling the game out for its absolutely atrocious and exploitative monetization model, which led to much speculation about how much money a character would cost you and even led to a guide site declining to cover the game any longer. And all of this outrage has resulted in… the game reaching $100 million in revenue in two months of operation, meaning that it beat out every mobile game other than Pokemon Go in terms of how fast it reached that landmark. [Update: As multiple commenters pointed out, Genshin Impact made four times as much in the same amount of time; it’s not clear why Sensor Tower’s list omits it. GIbiz’s reporting still says that “Blizzard title becomes second-fastest mobile game to reach [this] financial milestone, behind Pokémon GO.”]
In other words, it appears that once again the quest to get people to not spend money on abusive monetization was failed without any real challenge. Next year in Jerusalem, maybe.
Of course, the game’s staying power remains to be seen; it’s worth noting that Fortnite took 12 weeks to reach that same milestone. Similarly, it’s important to note that the next quarter’s earning results will be disclosed in a call on Monday, so we’ll see how well the monetization worked out compared to budget then. Still, that’s a fast climb to $100 million, and that’s also with the game having only released in China very recently (with some criticisms and a rather dulled media announcement).
