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China Delays Diablo: Immortal Release Over Xi Jinping Insult

Immortal's Weibo account openly mocked China’s president 
by Joe Wilcock on June 26, 2022   



Since its release on June 2nd, Diablo: Immortal has raked in over $24 million in micro-transactions and has over 10 million downloads to its name. Compare that to COD mobile, which made $14 million in its first week and PUBG which accumulated $600,000 in its first seven days of its micro trans going live and it's fair to say that Diablo: Immortal has performed amicably. 

This is made even more impressive as China has yet to be factored into their profits and thanks to a recent faux pas by Blizzard, they won’t be doing it anytime soon.  

The release of Activision-Blizzard’s mobile Diablo spin-off, Diablo: Immortal, has been delayed in China for an offensive comment made on the social media platform Weibo, which also resulted in their account getting banned:
 


The post translates to: "why isn't (Winnie) the bear going out of office yet?"

Eliciting parallels between Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping isn’t a wise move considering China’s sensitivity over criticism of the President. They even went so far as to ban Christopher Robin back in 2018 due to the ongoing memes at the time. 

Blizzard’s Chinese representatives responded in a blog post on their website, downplaying the role the comment has had on the delay:
 

“Dear Adventurers:

We're sorry to inform you that Diablo: Immortal's June 23 launch schedule will be delayed.

The development team is making a number of optimization adjustments to the game: support for a wider range of models and devices, the highest quality rendering on more models, a lot of experience, network and performance optimizations, and more. We believe that the game experience in the official online version will become smoother and bring better game content to everyone.

In order to thank all adventurers for their patience, we have specially prepared an exclusive thank-you package containing legendary equipment and rich props and materials. After the official launch of "Diablo: Immortal", all adventurers can receive the above rewards through the in-game mailbox after registering their characters in the game. In addition, we will also add more welfare activities and generous rewards in the game.

Thank you for your support and understanding, we are doing our best and look forward to seeing you in Sanctuary soon!

- Diablo: Immortal  project team”


China is now the 3rd country to have problems with the release of Diablo: Immortal, following Belgium and the Netherlands who both found the RPG guilty of breaching gambling laws in Europe. 

It’s still not clear exactly when Diablo: Immortal will release in China, but it has been labelled as a postponement rather than a complete ban. 

It is however available for download in North and South America for iOS, Android and PC.
 


Check back with DailyGamer for more Diablo: Immortal news. 


 

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