Quote Originally Posted by maybee View Post
I feel sorry for the guy on stage, he looked so excited and pumped with the game and then some dick came along and as like " is this an out of season April Fools joke ?" and you can see him slowly just be crushed emotionally.

I can sort of understand some of the upset because mobile games can push money out of you, but like, PC games have DLC and Loot Boxes.
Honestly that guy just said what the audience was almost universally thinking. And I doubt it's so much that they'll just monetize the hell out of it (though they absolutely will) as much as it is making your big announcement to your hardcore PC fanbase at your big yearly convention be a mobile game is already dumb. Even dumber that looks like it might just be a re-skinned version of previous games the developer made (whether that's actually the case doesn't really matter as much as the fact that that's how it appears from the point of view of the fans looking at it. Doesn't matter if it's completely different under the hood if people can't see it). Hell, even announcing something you've farmed out to a chinese mobile developer as your big news is dumb when you're Blizzard. No one is getting psyched at Blizzcon for a mobile game that seems like it was primarily made to appeal to the chinese market that Blizzard obviously gives so few trouts about they didn't even make it themselves.

Now obviously any fan outrage that goes as far as death threats and absurdity like that is going too far. But I'd honestly say the things they're in general outraged about are actually pretty justified. And I say that as someone who doesn't even like Diablo and couldn't give two trouts on a personal level if the next game was some mobile garbage or a full blown PC release of Diablo 4.

What I can say is that on a personal level I find this whole thing to be an amusing and interesting train wreck that I can't look away from and I will probably continue to laugh at for a while to come. But it was also a predictable train wreck that anyone who isn't an executive at one of the biggest game publishers in the world would have been able to see coming long before they actually went and announced it.

Also, just as a bit of a related aside: if people boo your mobile game at your convention and your response is to ask them incredulously if they all have phones, then you're kind of being a dick in that moment and you may want to just end the presentation there before you inevitably make it worse.