My Life As A Gamer: Josh Stryfe Hayes Exposes "Diablo Immortal" As Predatory

If you care one whit about predatory business practices, especially those aiming at children and young adults (and anyone else bad with money or at math), watch this.

Josh has done a fantastic job digging deep into this game's business and gameplay model, and how the crippling of the latter is directly tied to making the former as lucrative as possible- and using every last psychological trick that casinos are notorious for to induce gambler-style dysfunctional psychology specifically to maximize the revenue that specific users generate for the company.

The business model rests upon "Create the Problem, Sell the Solution", and the constant relentless prompts to spend real money does exactly what the Bernays/Goebells-style marketers expect: dull your resistance to doing so, while increasing your frustration at making progress, resulting in you swiping that credit card to solve the problem- for a time. This is as Josh says: a Gacha game with extra steps.

The problem is that this game also exploits randomness, meaning that you have a chance to do work and not get paid (i.e. no loot or other reward for doing the thing), and you need to collect these rewards in order to quality for later gameplay scenarios- and this is multiplayer-enabled, so all of those multiplayer interpersonal dyanmics immediately take effect and (as Josh notes) have made an already exploitative and predatory situation into a madness-inducing toxic environment.

TLDR: If you don't keep up with the Jones, YOU GET BENCHED. If you get benched, you get left behind, and eventually you hit a hard wall that stops your gameplay entirely. You are expected to group up, which means that you're expected to keep up, and if you're not swiping that card to buy the widgets you need to fulfill group expectations to maximize success (and pay off) while minimizing risk then you're not doing your job and thus will get punted and wrecked.

Make note of the real money figures tossed around, and do some back-of-napkin math, and take note that this game--as all such games--are aimed specifically at those who are poor at impulse control, managing money, or both (such as children, young adults, and the poor- all of whom often have smartphones and love free-to-play games). This is as dangerous and devasting as any narcotic addition or alcoholism, as it has all of the Gambler's Fallacy designed into of a slot machine while having the classic dopamine rush of an action RPG.

I will not mince words: this thing--I cannot call it a game, as it disgusts me that much--needs to be purged, and banning it is a good start. You that have minors or similarly vulnerable people in your care, do so immediately for their own good.