Diablo Immortal now has Blizzard’s lowest ever user score on Metacritic

Diablo Immortal now has the worst Metacritic user score in Blizzard‘s history.

At the time of writing, the game has a user score of 0.5 out of 10, based on nearly 2500 user ratings.

Blizzard does have one other game with a 0.5 score – its 2021 re-release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, which received player backlash for adding microtransactions and a much-criticised faction system.

However, while both games have the same user score, Diablo Immortal has a higher percentage of negative user reviews (95.5% compared to Burning Crusade’s 94.6%), and has received more than six times as many reviews (2,485 versus 371).

Diablo Immortal - release date and PC announce trailer

The free-to-play MMO was released on June 2 on iOS and Android, and as an open beta on PC, but quickly saw a negative reception for its heavy focus on microtransactions.

This included a report published during the game’s opening weekend that calculated that it could cost players up to $110,000 to fully upgrade a character in the game.

The only other Blizzard game to receive a user score of less than 1.0 on Metacritic was its 2020 remaster Warcraft III: Reforged, which received criticism for not including the revamped cutscenes shown during its original announcement, and lacking many social features from the 2002 original.

Diablo Immortal’s score now means Blizzard has achieved the unenviable feat of releasing 0.X user-scored games in three subsequent years (2020, 2021 and 2022).

It should be noted that Metacritic user scores do not require proof that the user has even played the game before submitting a score, and that other factors, such as recent Activision Blizzard controversies, may have had an influence.

The game is also enjoying notably better user scores on the iOS App Store and Google Play store, where it’s currently rated 4.6 and 3.3 respectively (out of 5).

However, one reason for this may be down to player claims that while the game initially seems to be reasonable with its use of microtransactions, it’s only once players reach the endgame that they start to feel intrusive.

Both the Diablo Immortal subreddit and the general Diablo subreddit are filled with posts from fans unhappy with the game’s monetisation system, while YouTubers have been posting examples of ‘whales’ easily winning PvP games by spending real money to get an advantage.

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Shortly after launch the game’s director Wyatt Cheng claimed on Twitter that the backlash to the game was “based on misinformation surrounding it”.

Months earlier, Cheng had said: “In Diablo Immortal, there is no way to acquire or rank up gear using money.”

However, Diablo Immortal lets players use real money in a bid to acquire powerful Legendary Gems, one of three progression pillars alongside regular gear and XP level, which can be used to upgrade a character in the post-game.

As such, while it may be accurate that ‘gear’ itself can’t be purchased with real money, some players have now labelled Cheng’s comments as disingenuous following the game’s release.