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The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal

Josh Strife Hayes
Commentary
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this commentary1 month2022–2023 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Pointed to as a breakdown of predatory monetization design in games.

Josh Strife Hayes critiques Diablo Immortal's monetization, arguing it is a gacha game in a Diablo skin with predatory spending mechanics.

“if anyone isn't familiar with the predatory design of Diablo Immortal I'd recommend this video.” (HN, 2022)

1 recommendations · 2 critical · Commentary · partly dated

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@richbell Dec 2022 Recommends
on HN thread Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations
> Wait until FTC find about Diablo Immortal. While I'm sure it's been discussed to death already, if anyone isn't familiar with the predatory design of Diablo Immortal I'd recommend this video. [this video]
Breakdown of the predatory monetization design in Diablo Immortal

Citations, criticism and jokes

@jerf Jun 2022 Pushes back
on HN thread As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick
Read more
It is brought up with other things. Perhaps you are extra sensitive about the weed topic for your own personal reasons. "Video games" is a particularly bad counter example, there's a lot of chatter around video game addictiveness and what it can do to vulnerable minds. There's always been some low-key discussion of it but the increasing prevalence of "loot boxes" and their corresponding mechanics have not just increased the volume of the hand-wringing but actually risen up to the level of being banned in certain countries. It's early days on that and I expect to see more regulation of video games over time. As a parent, I can and do directly control my children's access to video games. (My children for various reasons I'm not sharing on the internet are extra sensitive to the issues.) For example: "The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal" - [this video]
@Hammershaft Sep 2023 Pushes back
on HN thread Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max
AAA gacha games & Diablo Immortal clearly have quality production values, but they are also by far the most adept & deceitful at using predatory tactics pulled from behavioral psych to wring addicts out of their money. [this video]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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