Blizzard Faces Hellish Backlash after BlizzCon Diablo Mobile Reveal

SixFootDuo said:
Also, how can you compare Hearthstone to a re-skinned POS Chinese game? They aren't even on the same planet.
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I didn't. *Blizzard* compared the fans' reactions to that of when they announced Hearthstone. People were pissed and now everyone loves that game. Again, I was quoting someone else. Those aren't my words and that's not my claim nor my comparison.

Blizzard said they know their fans are passionate and they have sometimes take these things on the chin but it all works out in the end. Again, Blizzard said that not Mope54. Mope54 doesn't give a shit about Blizzard or mobile games. Mope54 has only ever played Warcraft (the only PC-only game Blizzard has made, ironically given your screed at me) and Mope54 is fucking happy as a pig in shit that Warcraft was re-released and Mope54 intends to play the ever living fuck out of that PC game.
 
I reckon NO ONE would have the slightest shred of a problem with them announcing this mobile game, had it followed the announcement of D4.

Seems like a colossal screwup to not at least throw the fanboys a bone with some teaser, even if completion is years away.
 
DPI said:
As if everyone wouldn't be "pirating the fuck out of" RDR2 exactly the same had it released same day as consoles.
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They have sufficient DRM now that they get away with 1-2 months of sales before pirating happens.
 
The game itself was a disappointment, but Blizzard trying to cover up the hate is even worse, damning actually. For those here that don't know all that's been going on, here's a recap.

tl:dr Blizzard lied and had been actively trying to cover it up
Long version. Lots of people are rightly mad. A consumer voicing their dislike of a business decision isn't whiny or juvenile. It's exactly what [H] did with GPP and I thank then for exposing that mess. Some may voice their dislike in whiny and juvenile ways, but being frustrated with a business decision isn't in and of itself whiny. Blizzard hyped up a diablo release to sell blizzcon tickets. Then used the closing portion of the key note speech Friday to announce it, not the end of the convention. Fans were floored. Then Blizzard insulted the fans by asking, "What, you don't have phones?" Further inflaming the situation. Blizzard has taken down and reposted the release video a few times to hide the dislikes. Even more inflammatory, apparently Blizzard reported thousands of YouTube comments as bots to hide the dislikes and comments. Blizzard has been heavily moderating their forums to suppress dissent, even posts not in violation of their code of conduct; one of my tamer posts got hidden because it voiced displeasure. Even crazier, Blizzard was apparently working with Reddit to suppress dissent there as well, luckily the backlash got big enough it couldn't be stopped. Blizzard has been completely deaf to their US playerbase, instead focusing on a cheapened Chinese cash grab reskin of an existing game. Fans aren't just pissed about the mobile game, I actually would have been excited about it had they not done the other nefarious things. Fans are pissed because this reeks of Activision doing what they do to good game studios, meaning milking the IP and running the studio into the ground. The Blizzard we know and love is dead, and this blizzcon just confirmed it.

I deleted all my Blizzard games and I'm working on a video showing how much time and money I've spent on blizzard over the last 20 years. Blizzard is now as dead to me as Activision and EA. Blizzard is now on my boycott list, because money is the only thing they listen to. Sadly, EA even did a better job handling the PR nightmare that was SW battlefront 2.

RIP Blizzard entertainment
 
mope54 said:
As you know, Blizzard is not, and hasn't ever been, a PC only gaming company. Mobile is just another gaming platform--one that millions of people use as their primary entertainment platform. D3 is on no less than seven platforms currently.

This isn't even the full extent of what they've got in store for their "fans":
“We have said that we have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple Diablo projects and that remains true, even after releasing [Diablo 3 for Nintendo] Switch and announcing Diablo: Immortal,” Adham said. “We still have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects. Diablo is a tentpole franchise for us. And it always will be. We love it. We hope our fans understand what we’re saying when we say that.”

Do the people in this thread strike you as understanding what a "tentpole franchise" is?
It's obvious they have no clue (and dollars to doughnuts they're going to confuse political "tentpole" with entertainment "tentpole"--one being inclusiveness and the other relating to driving funding/innovation). As an investor I'd think you'd be extremely pleased they've made this move.
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dude, you can get a straighter answer from a crooked politician than a big game dev these days. No one should trust what they say.
 
Hostile said:
People on the internet are such pieces of shit. Really. Grow the fuck up.

If any of these "hardcore Diablo fans" were upset that Diablo 4 wasn't announced then they're idiots. Blizzard has been hinting for weeks/months that Diablo4 was NOT going to be announced at BlizzCon this year, at least as far back as October 18th...

And never mind that it took 8 years for Blizzard to announce D3 after D2. So anyone expecting to hear about D4 so soon were kidding themselves.

And that guy who stood up at the Q&A and asked if it was an April Fool's joke is a rude, dickhead. He's not some internet hero, he's a douchebag.
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I disagree. I didn't expect Diablo 4. But didn't expect them to announce a fucking mobile game.
So everyone booing them at their own stage is a douche bag? Nah, they deserved this. The April Fool joke guy is a hero.
 
Wow...the fan boys on here carrying water for Blizzard's royal screw up is almost as bad as the Star Citizen fiasco defense force. :LOL:

I am following the thread now just for the lutz,,,
 
The white knights are out in full force. This was a slap in the face to the fan base. I think it's time fans of the series realize that all good things come to an end. It's time to move on. Vote with your wallet. Support devs that give a fuck about their game and the people that play it.
 
They should have taken the Bethesda Elder Scrolls route. They showed off their mobile Elder Scrolls game (Swords or whatever) but then ended it with the title splash for the next Elder Scrolls main line entry.
 
Nebell said:
I disagree. I didn't expect Diablo 4. But didn't expect them to announce a fucking mobile game.
So everyone booing them at their own stage is a douche bag? Nah, they deserved this. The April Fool joke guy is a hero.
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This is his AMA on reddit. He got to play the game , TLDR , copy and paste , soulless non Diablo type game you'd uninstall after 2 mins.

Best part is to get to ask the April Fool's joke question , he had to say he was going to ask "what was the Dev's inspiration to make this game" , to the screeners.

So the devs knew the questions ahead of time ,and instead of getting the inspiration question , they got our hero's April Fool's question.


 
mope54 said:
The only franchise in that list that is PC-only (or even PC-centric, whatever that means) is Warcraft.
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pendragon1 said:
im not arguing that ffs. they were all developed for pc then ported later. again go look at the timeline in the wiki I posted, write it down if youre having comprehension issues. they have been pc game dev since 94ish
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Krenum said:
Diablo 2 wasn't a console game. Is Star Craft 2?
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I know when I think of Starcraft I think of all the hours I put into it on my N64.... said no one ever.

Diablo on console? I’m sure I’ve seen it.

For the record Starcraft played like ass on console which is why we still don’t have a good RTS console scene. Last RTS for console I remember was Halo Wars.
 
fullvietFX said:
They're going to make millions off of it regardless.
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Sure they'll make money but they certainly hurt the Diablo brand doing this. Lately Blizzard games haven't been doing well in terms of expectations. Battle for Azeroth didn't fail as a game, but certainly failed as a WoW game. Rumor has it BfA had less than 2 million active players and dropping fast. They made a mistake and allowed players to see how many new characters are being made and you can do some estimates from that. Latest estimate shows there's maybe 1.5 million active players now. This Diablo mobile game maybe a quick cash grab cause Blizzard is definitely going to fall behind expectations

 
Krazy925 said:
I know when I think of Starcraft I think of all the hours I put into it on my N64.... said no one ever.

Diablo on console? I’m sure I’ve seen it.

For the record Starcraft played like ass on console which is why we still don’t have a good RTS console scene. Last RTS for console I remember was Halo Wars.
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Yes, Diablo 1 was on the Sony Playstation, it was actually a very good port. Still own it. StarCraft was on Nintendo 64, never played it.
 
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Krenum said:
Yes, Diablo 1 was on the Sony Playstation, it was actually a very good port. Still own it. StarCraft was on Nintendo 64, never played it.
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Owned Starcraft on n64 and saw diablo on PSX. Neither were much to write home about. N64 Starcraft was terrible.
 
Well regardless of this whole thing, I do eagerly await the release of this game, not to play but I really would like to see if this is a "reskin" of that previous game. And if it's a microtransaction money making paradise for Activision (not going to refer to them as Blizzard) then hey more power to them, I just won't be one of said microtransacties.
 
Didn't read the thread but the problem wasn't that they made a Diablo mobile game, it's that they announced it on the main stage as the keynote of that day's presentation. Any of their executives with a brain should have known that was a terrible idea after the hype for Diablo leading up to Blizzcon.
 
Bowman15 said:
I wouldn't be so sure about that. A large part of mobile gaming is women. How many do you think enjoy playing Diablo like games on a phone? All they want is time wasting mindless candyland games. Regardless that wasn't the point why Diablo fans are upset
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In the West this is true.

This is not true for Asia, and given that this co-developed by NetEase (Chinese mobile company) they are most likely banking (literally) on this being a success in Asia like the rest of their franchises.
 
Rizen said:
In the West this is true.

This is not true for Asia, and given that this co-developed by NetEase (Chinese mobile company) they are most likely banking (literally) on this being a success in Asia like the rest of their franchises.
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Oh absolutely, I'm sure in the contracts that went down for this Blizzard required certain "creative decisions" and NetEase probably required that Blizzard promote this as if it's a featured product.
 
Meh … the Blizzard "fan" community is perhaps the most toxic community going. I have never seen any group so pleased to hate their chosen hobby so very much.
 
Actually most of the successful franchise are on mobile, and mobile game is a giant industry in the eastern world. I look forward to it honestly. Just don't understand the fans.. Blizz can do a number of Diablo projects, if something they don't like just ignore it. There will be a Diablo 4 and Diablo MMO sometime in the next 10 years I am sure.
 
Axils said:
Actually most of the successful franchise are on mobile, and mobile game is a giant industry in the eastern world. I look forward to it honestly. Just don't understand the fans.. Blizz can do a number of Diablo projects, if something they don't like just ignore it. There will be a Diablo 4 and Diablo MMO sometime in the next 10 years I am sure.
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This isn't hard to understand at all.

Blizzcon is a hardcore con with a very traditional PC and console audience.

Mobile games are casual games that have very little overlap with Blizzard's core audience except maybe Hearthstone.

Making a mobile Diablo game is fine. Hyping up a Diablo announcement at Blizzcon and then announcing a mobile game as the final presentation on the main stage for day 1 is just really the wrong audience and any of their executives who don't have their head stuck up their ass should have seen that.

The fact that it would have been so easy to mitigate this - just show a Diablo 4 font logo and announce the game like Bethesda did with Elder Scrolls 6 - and yet they still didn't do that is telling. They are either wildly out of touch with the core audience or they don't have anything at all planned for D4. Thus the anger.
 
Axils said:
Actually most of the successful franchise are on mobile, and mobile game is a giant industry in the eastern world. I look forward to it honestly. Just don't understand the fans.. Blizz can do a number of Diablo projects, if something they don't like just ignore it. There will be a Diablo 4 and Diablo MMO sometime in the next 10 years I am sure.
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https://imgflip.com/memegenerator
 
If Valve did something like this with Half Life I wonder if the outcry would be more or less than this. A part of me kind of enjoy seeing people completely lose it.
 
Bowman15 said:
I wouldn't be so sure about that. A large part of mobile gaming is women. How many do you think enjoy playing Diablo like games on a phone? All they want is time wasting mindless candyland games. Regardless that wasn't the point why Diablo fans are upset
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LMAO, who told you this?
if mobile gaming is women only then they sure suck at gaming since I can't see them in the Vainglory, Arena of Valor, Mobile Legends E-Sports Championships, let alone in Huaweis and Gamelofts Modern Combat Versus Championships.
 
Denpepe said:
I have no issue with blizz making a game like that, I just wont play it. However this should have been a minor anouncement to something like ow yeah, next year at blizz con we will show you D4 or in 6 months we will release a remake of D2 but not this sould not have been anything major.

IMO blizzard is milking it's existing games a bit too long, while supporting your old games for a long time is a good thing, and I on't need a new game every year like cough cough AC or COD but with games like heartstone, heroes of the storm, overwatch and wow where they just keep adding stuff this is getting hard to also develop new games.
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Who makes Diablo?
Blizzard

Who owns the Diablo IP?
Blizzard

why should they make a minor announcement of the game they are making, its Blizzcon, an event hosted by Blizzard.

Let them take their sweet time making Diablo 4, you guys want Developers to rush their games, then complain when it is unfinished and it's buggy.
 
Krenum said:
The switch version is fine. Hell even Diablo 1 was on Playstation & it was fantastic.

Mobile however is an obvious money grab catered to the Chinese audience. On top of that, nobody asked for it. Nobody & nobody wants to play a game like Diablo on a tiny screen with their thumbs. The issue is, Blizzard could give two shits of what you & and everybody else wants. All they care about at this point is making as much money with as little effort as possible. No creativity, No inspiring concept, no thought process, just fast easy money, and they'll get it, they'll get it because people are stupid & the trend will continue.
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this is a game built from the ground up, creating their own studio would be 3 to 10 times as costly, they will need to buy new offices, purchase render farms, server farms, create a brand new game engine etc, whereas with Netease they can ship a couple of designers and artists to China, since Netease already has the expertise to port and make mobile games, it was a win win for Blizzard.
its Biz 101

velusip said:
A beloved franchise which has been a cornerstone to "hardcore" PC gaming. And it's a reskin of another game... on mobile. And what makes it worse is that Blizzard wins. Really, it doesn't even matter how disrespectful it is. They win by default because gaming is so big right now, that all you have to do is 1. have a bit of fame (, legacy, notoriety, respect, whatever) 2. Release anything (including redshell spyware, MTX, reskin, mobile) 3. ???? 4. Profit. They threw their best at that formula.
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E-Rat please, how can Diablo be a cornerstone of PC when Diablo 3 is a multi platform title, PC only games don't pay the bills since many PC gamers pirate.
 
DPI said:
I reckon NO ONE would have the slightest shred of a problem with them announcing this mobile game, had it followed the announcement of D4.

Seems like a colossal screwup to not at least throw the fanboys a bone with some teaser, even if completion is years away.
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so you wanted them to announce Diablo 4 when its 2 to 4 plus years away, then rage like the majority of this forum e.g any Star Citizen thread when it doesn't come out.
 
Deathroned said:
LMAO, who told you this?
if mobile gaming is women only then they sure suck at gaming since I can't see them in the Vainglory, Arena of Valor, Mobile Legends E-Sports Championships, let alone in Huaweis and Gamelofts Modern Combat Versus Championships.
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Haven't heard of those, though I've heard about candy crushes, farmvilles and likes. Different genres but females are surely more represented in mobile than in PC and console games.
 
mope54 said:
The only franchise in that list that is PC-only (or even PC-centric, whatever that means) is Warcraft.
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The fact that you are unable to distinguish PC-centric from PC-only renders all your arguments irrelevant.

Deathroned said:
so you wanted them to announce Diablo 4 when its 2 to 4 plus years away, then rage like the majority of this forum e.g any Star Citizen thread when it doesn't come out.
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Star Citizen's problem is they keep taking money as donations and they don't even have a game in the beta phase yet. Yet they will spend time and money on cinematic cameos and throw out $10k ships to purchase. That is not something a game being funded by a studio (and the studio's investors) will have.

And as said, this is not a new game from the ground up. This is a reskin of a game Netease has reskinned probably hundreds of times. The only thing "innovative" is that now they get to use Blizzard IP for this particular reskin. Something I am sure will only take the Chinese artists 5 weeks to make at a cost of less than $100k. And there will be lootboxes. It won't be called lootboxes (most likely), but there will be a gacha system no different than what is in literally every other free-to-play mobile game.
 
Tsumi said:
The fact that you are unable to distinguish PC-centric from PC-only renders all your arguments irrelevant.



Star Citizen's problem is they keep taking money as donations and they don't even have a game in the beta phase yet. Yet they will spend time and money on cinematic cameos and throw out $10k ships to purchase. That is not something a game being funded by a studio (and the studio's investors) will have.

And as said, this is not a new game from the ground up. This is a reskin of a game Netease has reskinned probably hundreds of times. The only thing "innovative" is that now they get to use Blizzard IP for this particular reskin. Something I am sure will only take the Chinese artists 5 weeks to make at a cost of less than $100k. And there will be lootboxes. It won't be called lootboxes (most likely), but there will be a gacha system no different than what is in literally every other free-to-play mobile game.
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stop pulling shit out of your ass and give us concrete proof, you said its a reskin then prove it, otherwise its just entitled Crybaby Master Race rage talking.

Krenum said:
It is not. Its a reskin of an already popular Netease game. "Its built from the ground up". Blizzard is lying to you.

As for conerstones, Diablo has always been developed first for the PC then ported. Do you even Diablo bro?
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hence why I mentioned Diablo 3 you dolt, it stopped being PC only after Diablo 2.
 
Deathroned said:
stop pulling shit out of your ass and give us concrete proof, you said its a reskin then prove it, otherwise its just entitled Crybaby Master Race rage talking.



hence why I mentioned Diablo 3 you dolt, it stopped being PC only after Diablo 2.
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Wow...I think you are in the wrong forum. Shouldn't you be stroking your iphone somewhere else shitting in those threads? Talk about misplaced rage. :confused:
 
Deathroned said:
this is a game built from the ground up, creating their own studio would be 3 to 10 times as costly, they will need to buy new offices, purchase render farms, server farms, create a brand new game engine etc, whereas with Netease they can ship a couple of designers and artists to China, since Netease already has the expertise to port and make mobile games, it was a win win for Blizzard.
its Biz 101



E-Rat please, how can Diablo be a cornerstone of PC when Diablo 3 is a multi platform title, PC only games don't pay the bills since many PC gamers pirate.
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I guess I'm breaking some rules responding to this, but I'll spell it out so it's nice and clear. Not many are denying a reskin -- maybe you and Blizzard. Damning evidence has already been posted and discussed at length in the links in this thread and others on this topic. Also, no one is denying that it's an economical move. The issue at hand is that many peolpe feel this was an announcement made in bad taste -- announced to several very hardcore fans who paid to be there.

Which brings us to the second point. "Hardcore." That's what Diablo is known for. When you create a character, you can choose "hardcore". Diablo didn't coin the term, but it certainly enforced it. I just don't see how you can reliably play a hardcore game on a phone -- while managing speadsheets and min-maxing your build. If Blizzard wants to go the way of Square Enix and release spinoffs of their major IP, go right ahead, but don't hype it up and announce it at a major event/trade show.

Also, I'm not sure why you got hung up on this detail, but "PC" was the least important detail in that comment to latch onto. I'm referring to personal computer, regardless of what architecture or operating system it runs -- a relatively powerful computer exhibiting a large screen experience at a desk with a mouse and keyboard in relative comfort. I'm not arguing that Diablo should only run on x86/x86_64 hardware in perpetuity, and I'm aware that some people refuse to call Apple computers PCs, but I will argue a defense that the traditionally hardcore, PC experience of Diablo might not fly on a tiny phone and maybe that's why the audience -- AT BLIZZCON -- might have been upset.
 
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