Diablo 4 devs really want you to know the game isn’t going pay-to-win

Diablo 4 devs really want you to know the game isn’t going pay-to-win
Images via Blizzard

Written by 

Joseph Kime

Published 

6th Dec 2023 11:55

Blizzard Entertainment recently got itself into hot water with Diablo 4, and given that it's a game that treads the line between our plane of existence and Hell, you'd think it would be able to take the heat.

Recent polls that had been sent exclusively to a cross-section of Diablo players asked players if Blizzard's hoped price points were acceptable, with some fees reaching into the hundreds of dollars for powerful items.

As you can imagine, players who were already paying after buying the AAA title for the battle pass were furious - and now Diablo has kicked back with a statement that is hopefully going to bring players back around.

Diablo is certain it isn't going pay-to-win

The recent Campfire Chat video from the developers of Diablo 4 has revealed the team's response to these reports of a pay-to-win structure, and they wasted no time in shooting down the claims.

Taking an influx of questions about the survey that went out to fans and its implied pay-to-win structure, Game Director Joe Shely didn't mess around with his response - "yeah, no," he says succinctly.

Director of Community Adam Fletcher added, "We do want to confirm that we did talk about and address the questions we've been seeing a lot in the community related to pay for power that have been swirling around; people talking about 'are you guys planning on adding pay for power in Diablo 4,' and I know that."

"We talked about it in the beginning, we are not planning on adding pay for power in Diablo 4." Between them, the team told us six times that Diablo 4 won't be going pay-to-win. Well, at least that's something. 

What exactly rustled Diablo 4 fans’ feathers?

A new survey had been dispensed to select Diablo 4 players, and we likely wouldn’t have known about it if it weren't for the YouTube channel Bellular News, which shared the contents of its questions online. They asked players if $50, $70, $80 or $100 expansions sounded good to them, and in many cases, it simply didn't.

It had seemed as though Diablo was gearing up to introduce some seriously pricey in-game items, but this new reaction from the team indicates the opposite. Whatever the case, it looks as though Blizzard isn't going through with its implied content expansions into pricey items. It's good news because we definitely can’t afford it after Diablo's Overwatch crossover.

Joseph Kime
About the author
Joseph Kime
Joseph Kime is the Senior Trending News Journalist for GGRecon from Devon, UK. Before graduating from MarJon University with a degree in Journalism, he started writing music reviews for his own website before writing for the likes of FANDOM, Zavvi and The Digital Fix. He is host of the Big Screen Book Club podcast, and author of Building A Universe, a book that chronicles the history of superhero movies. His favourite games include DOOM (2016), Celeste and Pokemon Emerald.
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