Just two weeks after release, Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal has earned about $24 million for the studio, according to Appmagic. In an estimate it shared with GameDev Reports, the analytics firm said the free-to-play game was downloaded almost 8.5 million times over the same timeframe, with 26 percent of downloads being from the US. Most of Blizzard’s revenue from Diablo Immortal has also come from America. So far, US players contributed about 43 percent of all the game’s earnings. Blizzard must be liking that.
To put it in context, Hearthstone, the only other mobile game Blizzard has out right now, earned about $5 million in May. Despite the vocal backlash to Immortal’s monetization systems, it looks like it is safe to say no one expected the game to fail entirely. The worry for many fans was that Immortal might be so successful that it would go on to inform how the studio monetizes its future games.
Well, right now, that fear seems unfounded. In fact, Diablo franchise general manager Rod Fergusson recently said Diablo IV would feature a different set of monetization systems than Immortal. “To be clear, D4 is a full-price game built for PC/PS/Xbox audiences,” he tweeted recently. Blizzard also announced this week that Overwatch 2 would do away with loot boxes. So for the moment we are safe.
Source Engadget
Image Credit Blizzard