Wednesday, September 18th 2024
Diablo IV Reaches $1 Billion Milestone, Microtransactions Falling Below Activision's Usual Share
Diablo IV received some severe backlash over microtransactions when it launched back in 2023, with some bundles even costing more than the $69.99 base game. It appears, however, that its microtransaction-laden monetization strategy has paid off, according to an accidental leak on LinkedIn from senior product manager, Harrison Froeschke.
According to the now-deleted LinkedIn profile update, Diablo IV has managed to generate a total of $1 billion in total revenue since it launched, with $150 million of that coming from microtransactions and in-game purchases. Perhaps more interestingly, though, is the fact that this is unusually low for an Activision-Blizzard game.
While $150 million—15% of the game's total revenue—is nothing to scoff at, it turns out that it actually falls short of Activision-Blizzard's average revenue split. Data from Statista indicates that, in 2022 at least, as much as 78% of Activision-Blizzard's overall net revenue came from "in-game purchases, subscription services, and other revenues". Of course, this includes King, the mobile gaming division responsible for making Candy Crush, which would artificially elevate that figure.
King only makes free-to-play mobile games, however, so it's safe to assume its revenue only contributes to the $5.889 billion Activision-Blizzard made from in-game purchases and microtransactions in 2022. Eliminating King's $2.785 billion from Activision-Blizzard's 2022 earnings still leaves microtransactions accounting for $3.101 billion, while game purchases only resulted in $1.642 billion in revenue—that leaves microtransactions, subscriptions, and other in-game purchases at roughly 65% of Activision-Blizzard's entire revenue for 2022, compared to just 15% for Diablo IV alone.
Gamepressure managed to grab a screenshot of the LinkedIn post before it was deleted (see above), and while it doesn't explicitly mention subscriptions, it's safe to assume "bundle offers" also include recurring battle pass purchases made through the Diablo IV store. While it's clear gamers still spent sizeable sums of money in the Diablo IV in-game store, it seems as though the earlier criticisms of the game's hefty cosmetic purchase prices fairly accurately reflected the sentiments of players when the game initially launched.
The LinkedIn profile, which has seemingly been removed from the internet in its entirety, reads as follows:
Sources:
GamePressure, Statista (Activision-Blizzard), Statista (King)
According to the now-deleted LinkedIn profile update, Diablo IV has managed to generate a total of $1 billion in total revenue since it launched, with $150 million of that coming from microtransactions and in-game purchases. Perhaps more interestingly, though, is the fact that this is unusually low for an Activision-Blizzard game.
King only makes free-to-play mobile games, however, so it's safe to assume its revenue only contributes to the $5.889 billion Activision-Blizzard made from in-game purchases and microtransactions in 2022. Eliminating King's $2.785 billion from Activision-Blizzard's 2022 earnings still leaves microtransactions accounting for $3.101 billion, while game purchases only resulted in $1.642 billion in revenue—that leaves microtransactions, subscriptions, and other in-game purchases at roughly 65% of Activision-Blizzard's entire revenue for 2022, compared to just 15% for Diablo IV alone.
Gamepressure managed to grab a screenshot of the LinkedIn post before it was deleted (see above), and while it doesn't explicitly mention subscriptions, it's safe to assume "bundle offers" also include recurring battle pass purchases made through the Diablo IV store. While it's clear gamers still spent sizeable sums of money in the Diablo IV in-game store, it seems as though the earlier criticisms of the game's hefty cosmetic purchase prices fairly accurately reflected the sentiments of players when the game initially launched.
The LinkedIn profile, which has seemingly been removed from the internet in its entirety, reads as follows:
- Leading the monetization strategy of the store cosmetics, pricing, bundle offers, personalized discounts, and roadmap planning which have driven over $150M MTX lifetime revenue.
- Executed every step of game sales since game pre-order to the first expansion by configuring and collaborating with other teams resulting in over $1B total lifetime revenue.
- Collaborating with IP Stakeholders to bring in popular franchises into the world of Diablo via themed engagement incentives and cosmetics based on popular characters.
- Designing and implementing the use of detailed data tags for all store products to not only enable a more powerful recommendation engine, but also allowing for better toggles for data dashboards.
- Training other Product Managers all the tools and procedures needed to operate the shop and battle pass successfully, including contention plans and contact lists.
43 Comments on Diablo IV Reaches $1 Billion Milestone, Microtransactions Falling Below Activision's Usual Share
www.beuc.eu/reports/game-over-consumers-fight-fairer-game-purchases
The battle against virtual currencies in games is going to end up leaving ActiMic with even less MTX revenue.
Sucks that they've already basically abandoned a proper game without it. Or maybe its just great news. The banhammer is coming
- co signed, this member ;)
And the revenues for those are just callous.
No way D4 deserves that much revenue considering how bad that game is...
So yeah, I agree, microtransactions and in-game currencies should be banned.
Some things never change
And then there's all the nonsense around it.... I"m playing WH40K Inquisitor now and it has literally every single feature as well... but NO MTX to pay for it. Its just all ingame currency with no cash involved, and then, suddenly all these systems feel the way they should. No timed exclusivity, just a bunch of unlocks to get cosmetic features, so you have in-game goals for it as well, adding to the actual replay value by just promoting 'content' to play. There is some timed stuff like building reputation with the 3 Ordos to unlock better store content for them, and again, because there's no monetary system behind it, the game's fine with you adding several Tarot card bonuses to bypass / speed up the reputation gain massively, so you can comfortably get new store additions in your current play session and aren't forced to wait.
Its those little differences that show you how detrimental MTX are to the game itself. Even if they're cosmetic - there's always an influence and its never positive. So in a practical sense you're paying for a worse game with forced online. Not only is the code never yours or under your control, you're also constantly being screwed over and manipulated into buying more of this bad product.
Never. Again.
If it's on sale for like 20EUR, I may buy it.
But paid game and MTX / seasonal paid content? That's already crossing the line imho.
If a smaller studio makes a great game on a small budget, then I'll be willing to buy that game. It's that simple. I don't want to be subjected to petty tricks to get money out of my pocket.I don't know that game.
MTX and seasonal content are both sick and wrong, whether they appear together or not.
Another thing is that microtransactions are the most prevalent in multiplayer games that only run as long as its servers are running. Why should I keep pumping money into a temporary thing?
This is one of the reasons why I hate multiplayer. It's money spent on a temporary flick. Money you'll never get back.
- F2P
- All content and updates are free (no seasonal paid dlc)
- The MTX are not pay to win, but rather: stash tabs to store more stuff, and cosmetics. There is a natural synergy here between frequent playing and then buying some stash tabs, and this is why it works. In a practical sense, you will at some point pay 20 bucks to get a substantial number of those stash tabs. They also go on sale from time to time; it never really feels like they want to extract maximum cash out of you, but rather just 'ask for a reasonable fee', and you are in control how high that fee really is.
If you are still playing after a long time, you will probably be buying more stash tabs. It also helps that the way these tabs work is excellent. They invented the idea of custom tabs: give a color, a name to them, sort them how you want, etc. We see this in various other games now.