Diablo IV’s microtransactions won’t affect gameplay but they will cost you a ton. Our first look at the dungeon-crawler’s cosmetic shop shows special mounts priced at as much as $US15, while armour for classes like the Necromancer will run as high as $US25.
Some of these prices previously leaked on Reddit, and now that Diablo IV is live in its early access period for those with the Deluxe Edition, we’re able to verify that prices for the current items in the microtransaction shop do range from not that surprising to ridiculously high. At the low end are things like the Death’s Burden Mount Armour, which is 800 platinum, the game’s premium currency. The cheapest armour sets are around 1,200 platinum, while at the high end are things like the Wraith Lord set, which requires 2,800 platinum.
Like a lot of live-service games, the conversion from real-world dollars to platinum isn’t exactly one-to-one. So an 800 platinum mount armour set will require you to buy 1,000 platinum for $US10. Perhaps sensing this might annoy some players, $US25 will get you 300 “free” bonus platinum, giving you exactly 2,800, or the amount required for the Wraith Lord set.
Combined, the pricier mounts and armour sets will set you back over 50 per cent of the price of the game, which is $US70 ($97). To purchase everything currently listed in the shop at launch, you’d need just over 40,000 platinum, or about $US350. When games usually charge an arm and a leg for a handful of shiny cosmetics, it’s because they’re free-to-play like Overwatch 2. Diablo IV doesn’t have that excuse.
And even in Blizzard’s hero shooter, new outfit bundles are closer to $US20 a pop. In Fortnite you can get away only spending $US10-15 per additional costume, which itself seemed high back when the battle royale first blew up. Destiny 2, perhaps the closest comparison because it charges full price for new expansions, maxes out around $US20-25. That doesn’t make Diablo IV a massive outlier, but it’s certainly pushing the boundary of inflation in the cosmetics market.
Microtransactions were once a very controversial feature. Now they’re as common in online multiplayer games as a kid dumping something inappropriate into the live chat. Still, it can kind of suck to see cool things in the game locked behind pricing structures seemingly aimed at fleecing whales.
Games are expensive to make, and the budget demands are only getting more ridiculous. It might be easier to stomach certain games’ monetisation models if it felt like all of that money was going straight into the pockets of the rank-and-file devs who made them. With companies like Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts touting record revenues from microtransactions and paying out massive stock bonuses to their executives while also laying off staff or denying them raises, it’s hard to feel like that’s the case.
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