Blizzard’s boss defends the unpopular microtransactions in Diablo Immortal

Blizzard President Mike Ybarra sees no problem in Diablo Immortal’s microtransactions and defends them against the many critical voices from the community.

Ybarra doesn’t blame the payment model

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times Blizzard’s boss says that the microtransactions are important to enable a free experience in Diablo Immortal for so many players.

“When we think about monetization, it’s at the highest level how we can offer hundreds of millions of people a free Diablo experience where they can literally do 99.5% of anything in the game,” said Ybarra.

In addition, monetization only comes into play in the end-game. “The philosophy has always been to start with great gameplay and ensure hundreds of millions of people can play through the entire campaign at no cost.” And that’s exactly what Diablo Immortal offers, according to Ybarra.

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With these words, Ybarra tries to defend the free-to-play MMO. After all, many players have been complaining since the release on June 2nd about the unfair payment model that separates the wheat from the chaff in the endgame – i.e. the payers from the non-payers.

The mobile game has a user score of 0.4 on Metacritic, as players bombarded the title with bad reviews after the internet raged over the microtransactions. The title only has 2.9 stars in the Playstore. The game itself is much less often criticized, often even praised.