Blizzard is reportedly asking Diablo 4 players if they're okay with $100 DLC

I think the craziest thing is, that the survey starts at 50$. They just assume that must be the minimum prize everyone is ok with.

Lunatics…

Neat trick, isn’t it ?
- Seems like they’ve got experience..
What...? That's 20$ short of the whole game...
$50 is, like, a week of median per-capita household income.
- Man, things are a LOT worse in the US than the media makes you believe if the median income is $2600 a year.

They ain't getting a dollar or of me. Didn't buy D4, what a toxic, problematic company. I miss the classic Blizzard I grew up with, but that comany, it's talent and passion died in '08.

After everything that's come out about their work culture and the naked cash grab micro transactions games they are making now, I'm sorta baffled by those still buying Blizz.
I've always known blizzard to be like this, although I didn't really game until around 2010.
The first thing that comes to mind was/is the World of Warcraft subscription cost that still doesn't include all of the expansions. A base subscription is almost $200 CAD/year alone. They are also now selling mounts at $32 CAD each. Personally, especially if I was paying $200 a year, I wouldn't want to be pushed to pay even more money for content.
Part of me kind of wishes that I could have seen the era you're talking about.
- It was great when they made Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. I played way too much Warcraft and Warcraft 2, and Starcraft and Diablo were "forbidden fruit" for me since my parents didn't like M games.
  World of Warcraft was the beginning of the end for the Blizzard I used to know. Starcraft 2 started throwing in MTX BS, Hearthstone went full force into MTX, and they just kept adding it to all of their games. If it was just World of Warcraft, I'd give them a pass, but they've shown a clear pattern of poor behavior.
  They went from being probably my favorite studio (either them or LucasArts; honorable mention to Sierra and Westwood) to being one I actively avoid. Pretty much none of my favorite studios exist anymore, and most of those that do have either changed immensely or have been absorbed by a terrible parent company. The 90s was a magical time for video games imo, lots of great, smaller studios.
Did the blizzard people start a new company?
They must've gone on to something better.
- There's been a few studios from former Blizzard employees. Just yesterday I got an update about Stormgate which is being made by Frost Giant Games. There's also Dreamhaven, Gas Giant Games, and notorious studios.
- Many have just retired early. They made bank.
Do you know the names of the people who made what you like? Maybe if you follow them and not the company brand you find what "died".
- Ghostcrawler is heading up a new MMO, probably a couple years out though
  Not sure what Jeff Kaplan is up to, probably retired and I wouldn't blame him

I’m hoping the collective answer is: “stop smoking crack”.

Who is playing Diablo 4? Especially this year.

I mean, I checked it out at launch, thought it was fine, didn't even finish the main campaign, moved on to the other million great games that came out the past few months. Is this game still relevant?

I'm playing season two. It's quite decent, a good game for me to decompress. TBH I played pre-season until WT4 and stopped at level 79. This season is much more streamlined and I'm currently on level 75 after 1/3 of the time played vs my pre-season char. I'll give Last Epoch a whirl after beating all the endgame bosses.
- Fair enough. D3 took a while to click for me, too, and it only did once they turned it into basically an idle game or digital bubble wrap. D4 felt a bit more MMO-y and I wasn't there for it, but I always figured they'd get to making it more D3-ish eventually and I could check it out again then.
  And then the best year of gaming in a decade happened and I forgot D4 even existed. But I don't resent anybody who stuck with it. I bet I would have given it more of a go under different circumstances.

Rant

I've always been of the "vote with your dollar" or "If you don't like it, don't buy it" mentality until recently. Now it seems like the heavy concentration of market power into a few companies is spurring on the continued development of "pricing innovations".

Remember when they said digital distribution would make the games cheaper and they would pass the savings down to us? (surprise that was a lie). That's just the cost of innovation.

Diablo 4 isn't a "bad game" but for games as a service that contains microtransactions, it certainly isn't a game worth a $100 expansion pack. They didn't even include the game with the collectors edition. Sell the collectibles without the game for a premium! Get paid twice! Innovation!

As more and more disappointments land face first on the concrete floor of the empty swimming pool surrounded by apathetic"entitled " gamers they still will not learn from their mistakes because the money says otherwise. They would rather go out of business then sell you a product you actually want to buy. That's the cost of innovation.

I don't know if this is the right place to say this. I urge everyone to collect physical copies of games, back them up, share them and archive them. We're never getting back what we've lost no matter how much we're willing to pay for it.

Relative to the cost of everything else / inflation, games actually were pretty cheap. They had been $50/60 for nearly 30 years. Now we're in the shitty time where it's $70 for the base game, $30 for day 1 dlc, battlepasses, micro (really macro) transactions, etc.
- Yes that is true.
  Games were cheap for a long time. It was a competitive market. When the N64 came out, game cartridges were 80$ in the US (depending on the title). Neo Geo games were $200 a cartridge new before that. The prices resembled a (arguably) higher quality item.
  The Sony PlayStation had games typically around the $30 to $40 dollar price point and that enabled Sony to sell endless copies of Blasto and other (arguably shovelware) games at the time. This loss leader strategy Sony had destabilized a lot of the market. Systems makers had to lower the price of games to increase the install base and they constantly lost money (sega Saturn games used to sell as low as 10$ new in 1997).
  $70, $80, even $120 Dollars for a triple A title like Elden Ring or Super Mario Galaxy wouldn't be that crazy to me depending on the state of that market. Some people are buying OG PlayStation games like MegaMan Legends in excess of $200. In the end though, you have the game. It is your copy.
  The wake up call for me was when Microsoft has to be shamed into walking back their weird anti consumer Xbox game cd key sharing policy because Sony made this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA

anyone who didn't uninstall battlenet after the Blitzchung nonsense gets the DLC they fucking deserve

Who wants to pay $100 to run into a thousand cellars?

After reading a story about bg3 patch 5 adding an epilogue set 6 months after the games end with over 3500 new lines of dialogue, new cutscenes which is based on the thousands of decisions you made in your playthrough and different for everyone and its just a patch and its free. This makes me so mad that blizzard have become this shit hole of a company.

that was probably going to be in the base game but they released it without itanyway. wish obsidian did that for new vegas instead of a stupid slideshow 😂
- Maybe it was but you know if it was any other comapny rhry would have charged for it and it woild be broken still.

What?

First of all, after the shitshow that was the launch of D4, that's just hilarious. S2 is certainly better than the start, but it is no holy grail that magically fixed everything.

Secondly, you're dreaming if you think a DLC is worth more than the base game.

And finally, I like how they're "asking" players if they'd "be okay" with it. Are you telling me that if the majority of the player base said "NO!" they'd actually listen? If there is anyone who believes that, well I've got a bridge in Sanctuary to sell you.

Depending on how extreme the NO! answers are, they may delay it or split the 100$ DLC in 2 50$ DLC, which you both have to get to actually play the game.
- I think you mean 2 $70 DLCs because "the $100 was a discounted bundle" now available for $120.

I'll play D4 if and when it's free. Otherwise I'm not interested.

That would probably make me less likely to play it, because then there'd be even more MTX crap. I'm just not interested at any price.
- Sure, but it won't cost me anything to try at that point, and if it sucks, so be it.

Diablo 4 isn't that good of a game and not even close to the best arpg. I admittedly got hosed on buying it at launch and am not giving them more money. Why would I spend over 150$ total to get the equivalent of 1 mediocre game assuming they fix all the bs. Definitely regret the purchase at this point, and if a fixed version is going to be locked behind absurdly priced dlc in the future I feel like I got scammed twice.

Honestly I’d like them to release enough content to make me feel like I didn’t waste my original purchase price, maybe I just am wanting for Diablo 1/2 days :(

Diabo 2 remaster is still really good
Other than that, il just wait for poe 2

Vomit. Blizzard gets worse and worse. Good ole capitalism.

It encourages innovation
- Blizzard hasn’t done shit for innovation for a very long time

No

Blizzard: Would you be okay with a 100$ DLC?

Me: Sure, I stopped buying your overpriced crap years ago :D

70 for a game that doesn't feel finished wasn't ok.
Agreed, do what you want, I'm not buying regardless.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahaha... Fuckin idiots.

I swear they're spiking the water with acid down in silicon valley, how can so many companies be making so many dumbass decisions all at the same time?

I don't think that Blizzard is in Silicon Valley.
googles
Yeah.
They've got a location in Southern California -- not Northern California, where Silicon Valley is -- and another in Boston, Massachusetts, and something in Austin, Texas.
how can so many companies be making so many dumbass decisions all at the same time?
People keep purchasing the product. Diablo Immortal told us what Diablo 4 would be, they still had significant launch day sales.

I am okay with $5000 DLC because i don't play this bitch-ass game.

Ahh, this must be where the laid off Bungie employees went to.

$120 is my yearly budget for games.

- Blizzard is an out-of-season April fools joke.
- So you would pay 120 for dlc every year...

I won't even buy the shitty $70 game because the beta was fucking terrible.

Lmao

Absolutely not

Unless it comes with Diablo V then hell no

Even then, you probably won't like Diablo V, it'll be even more MTX laden, like you'll probably need to pay for every combo of character and class you want to play.
Good Blizzard is dead, all that's left is greedy Blizzard.

I was willing to pay at maximum €15 and that was already pushing it for me.

I bought the ultimate edition because diablo is the franchise I spent most of my time on when gaming. But played more d2r than D4 since it released.

I'll come back to it later to check it out if it's better.

Can't be that they hired business and psychology people only to come up with such a retarded cost. My guess would be they intentionally leaked a $100 figure so they could price a barebones dlc at $50 and go 'see, we listened!'

Eh... no, almost certainly not.
What they did, if you read the piece, was to ask people what it would take to justify a long list of price points, from 50 to 100. Which is a good practice for a survey question like that, because you want to know at what point people start to say "there's nothing you could do to justify a price point of 70" so you know where the breaking point is.
It doesn't even mean that they'll price it at whatever people say is the breaking point. They could see that the sweet spot is somewhere else. But if you're asking people to put something on a scale you need the scale to be bigger than the range of valid responses or you can't see what people are saying.
Deceptive headlines are deceptive.

Feels like a power move. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft raises their fist and play a move where they end up being the good guy. All to save a dead game and get people to come back spending money.

... which will be stuffed with real-money charges anyway, because oink oink.

Alright, I'll pay up to $50 for a DLC pack that includes a new continent, at least as much story and content as the current game, at least 2-4 new character classes, and several new game play concepts. If you want me to pay the price for a new game, I need the equivalent of a new game out of it. As for $100, no. Ain't happening.

What is it is 1/3 of a continent, 20% more characters, and 5x more buggy, but... they add more microtransactions to the game so you could give them even more money.

I can't wait for Microsoft to take over.

phew they Didn't do the forbidden paradox

I'm not going to buy it, because I don't like the series or genre. Feels really shallow and repetitive to me.

But in general -- say, assuming some hypothetical developer of a game that I like, sure. I'd buy a $100 DLC. Hell, lots of games have more than $100 DLC (though it's commonly broken up into smaller chunks).

But that sword cuts two ways. The DLC that the hypothetical developer is making has to actually be worth $100 to me. And I can get a lot of really good games for considerably less than $100. Which means that whatever they're coming out with would need to provide a great deal of really good gameplay to be competitive.

If bg3 came out with a dlc that added more playable classes, playable races (kobolds), more story content with raised level cap, etc they could have my $100. But they won't do that, all their new content patches are free.

The awnser is no to all DLCs

Is it? I mean, Diablo expansions have been a thing since the very first game. I'm certainly not against DLC for the games I like if the content is good and have never been, even when the content wasn't "DL" and came in CDs.
- Yup, I'm the same way. I love good DLC because they generally provide even more value for a game I know I enjoy. Quite often, I enjoy a $10-15 DLC more than a $30-40 game.
  That said, I'm not paying $100 for a DLC, or even $50. I'd maybe do $50 if it had the same content as a sequel, but was sold as a DLC for whatever reason, but it needs to have fantastic reviews.