Diablo IV will be released on June 6, 2023, and so far everything indicates that the game will be a worthy continuation of the series. But the closer the release gets, the more concerns arise about how Blizzard will implement an additional monetization system beyond the sale of the game. Which is quite true against the background of very aggressive practices in Diablo Immortal, where without investing tens of thousands of dollars you can forget about full character leveling. Yes, and Diablo III had its drawbacks related to monetization, including the real money auction.
In an interview with Europlayer director Joe Shelley spoke about Blizzard’s plans to monetize Diablo IV. In short, the studio will not use the practices of F2P schemes. Instead, the company will use the most advanced tools to squeeze out the maximum amount of money. This means that there will be a real money shop, paid battle passes (or season passes), as well as paid expansions.
The launch of Diablo 4 is just the beginning. The development team will move from releasing the game to developing the service and extensions for the game. We will release regular expansions with stories, quests and classes. Our service will feature Seasons every three months, including new Seasonal features at a much higher level than Diablo 3. And yes, we will have Season Passes as companions to each Season.
All seasonal features and the seasonal experience will be available completely free of charge and all players will be able to access them. The Season Pass will give you access to additional cosmetics and other cool stuff. But it’s not absolutely necessary. It is not necessary to purchase it to participate.
The developers note that in Diablo 4 it will be impossible to buy a character’s power for money.
What will actually happen will become clear next summer.
