Video Game Industry Greed Hits New Low As Blizzard Begins Charging $30 Dollars For Class-Restricted ‘Diablo IV’ Portal Colors
Spencer Baculi
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In an absolutely audacious display of corporate greed from Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo IV players now have the option to spend $30 USD on new colors for their fast-travel portals.
And in case that wasn’t bad enough: Each color is also only usable by a single, individual class.
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Offered via the publisher’s Battle.net storefront, the Diablo® IV Dark Pathways pack grants players both 1,000 pieces of Platinum in-game currency (which is worth roughly $10 USD), as well as the items needed to change their respective portal graphic from the standard ‘blue magic swirl’ to one of five other options: a blue storming Tempest Gate, a fiery red Warpath, a turquoise-tinted Netherworld Threshold, a purple-slash-pink Transit Artery, or a yellow entrance into the Wildroot Way.
From the jump, it’s very apparent that this add-on pack is meant to nickel and dime either suckers, whales, or players new to the entire world of Diablo and its mechanics (or more likely, all three).
However, while the pack’s price alone – essentially $20 real world dollars for what amounts to different color skins for a single game element – warrants all the disdain and condemnation players can muster, what truly puts earns the Dark Pathway’s pack a spot on the ‘Anti-Consumer’ podium is the fact that each visual option “can only be used by the applicable character class”.
In other words, each portal skin is hard-locked to a single class: the Tempest Gate visual can only be used by Sorcerers, the Warpath by Barbarians, the Netherworld Thresh by Necromancers, the Transit Artery by Rogues, and the Wildroot Way by Druids. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Unfortunately for players, though the Dark Pathways pack is an objectively egregious example of microtransactions gone awry, such offerings are the norm, rather than the exception, in the Diablo IV market economy.
Take, for example, its Vitreous Scourge pack.
Featuring a special mount armor, two special mount trophies (special cosmetics which add physical items to the appearance of the player’s mount), and 7,000 Platinum currency ($70 USD), the pack costs a total of $65 USD – a price tag higher than each available edition of the actual game itself.
A three-item set made up of a single headstone, emote, and back trophy? On average, as seen with the Violence Requital pack, these bundles will run a player $8 – $10 USD.
Similarly, bundles such as the Bathed in Blood set, which offer players full gear sets, including weapons, are often added to the in-game cash shop with price tags in the mid-$20s.
And to top it all off, like the above town portal skins, these player gear sets are also limited to use by only one class.
We’d like to say ‘at least it can’t get any worse’, but given Blizzard’s absolutely awful history of anti-consumer practices, it’s honestly just a matter of time until it does.
At the very least, especially in light of the studio’s new financial backing from Microsoft granting them a not-insignificant-shield against the protests of non-whale players, it’s not going to get any better.
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