Diablo Immortal’s Chinese release has been postponed for “optimizations”

Blizzard have confirmed they’re delaying the launch of gem-wrangling time sink Diablo Immortal in the Asia Pacific region until July 7th, so they can complete “optimization”. The delay was originally announced on Sunday by the game’s regional publisher in China, NetEase, and was picked up on by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad on Twitter. The decision to delay came a few days after Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo banned the Diablo Immortal account due to unspecified “violation of related laws and regulations”.

The NetEase statements is a bit vague, but acknowledges that Diablo Immortal will no longer be out in China on the planned release date of June 23rd. It does clarify that players in affected regions will get a bag o’ goodies when the game launches, though. Check your inbox in-game once Diablo Immortal has launched in Asia Pacific to find one Legendary gear, 100 scrap materials and 10 enchanted dust. Hearing about this seeming generosity is unlikely to sway players in regions where the game’s already been released who’ve been put off the superficially free-to-play Diablo Immortal by its blatant monetisation.

Along with mobile faff that we don’t need to know about, Blizzard say they’re improving Diablo Immortal’s PC experience. There’ll be fixes to potions and skills lock-outs, automatic navigation, input delay problems with Xbox controllers, issues with the Demon Hunter’s primary attack, and more. They’re also fiddling with performance and network optimization, such as bug fixes and improvements to deferred lighting. You can read the full, updated roadmap of what Blizzard say they’re working on for Diablo Immortal here.

Diablo Immortal is already out in this neck of the digital woods, and you can download it directly from Blizzard using Battle.net. If you’re still perplexed by the game’s monetization then have a read of Rebecca’s excellent guide to how much it costs to play Diablo Immortal. It’s some serious money indeed.