A lot of the outrage comes from the fact that 1. Diablo is originally a PC-based IP with a PC gamer fanbase, and PC gamers are used to different monetization schemes and generally don't play mobile games. Even without the gambling mechanics, there already was a huge backlash about Blizzard making a mobile Diablo game 2. Diablo is a "western" IP where such monetization schemes are less common and the penetration of PC players is higher compared to other parts of the world where mobile game penetration is higher.
> And can "winning" result in a financial reward
Generally speaking, no. There are no competitions for these kind of games. The only way you could cash out would be to sell your account, which is against the ToS, but commonly done nonetheless.
In D3, you could buy equipment directly from the RMAH. This undermined core gameplay mechanisms since any loot you were likely to find would be inferior to whatever was available for pennies in the store. So why bother running the dungeons at all?
In DI, you don't buy gear directly with money. Instead, you buy access to dungeons with guaranteed drops of high level items which are statistically infeasible to obtain any other way. But this still lends plausible deniability: you're not buying your gear, you're just buying a spin at the (very weighted) wheel.
Interesting. Why would the publisher have such a ToS? Just so they monopolize the revenue from in-game sales? Or is it more altruistic, like preventing new players having an unfair advantage? I would have thought encouraging a secondary market in their game would actually attract players.
Yes. Look up “gacha games” [0] for the broader category. One very successful and very rich version of this genre is “genshin impact”
> And can "winning" result in a financial reward
In this case, no, not currently. People tend to structure competitive scenes around games without these mechanics but it could be done by the company developing the game. People are playing for the satisfaction of winning rare items or beating other people on a leaderboard.
Gacha games are mostly card-puller games. You pay $X for X pulls, with more expensive packages giving more pulls with a supposed higher success rate of 'winning' (getting a good/rare pull).
They use hidden weights, as well as max item rolls per day. This means that to keep items rare via artificial scarcity they will only allow so many of those cards to be pulled per X hours/days/whatever but they don't tell you this anywhere. So if that new hot card that just dropped is up for grabs, you buy 10 pulls. But you don't know that it's already been pulled X times by other people, so you have literally no chance to 'win'. So those pulls will be wasted.
The companies always lie about chances to win, the pulls are insane, you can see streamers do massive pulls, the numbers are sometimes out there, just community gathered.
A real life example is one of those light-roulette machines at arcaded where you slam the button to stop the spinning light. The only actual chance you have to win is after $X has been spent on the machine, before that threshold has been met winning is impossible, stopping the light at the correct spot won't matter it will simply roll to the next losing light. Or claw machines are the same and will only actually close enough to grab a toy after $X has been spent.
Gambling is one thing but these skinner boxes masquerading as games are pure evil as they change the rules constantly and make winning downright impossible.
This is why I’ve always been a bit surprised developers haven’t done more to get ahead of these kinds of issues with responsible disclosures and transparency, because it seems to be just inviting regulation. I honestly don’t think most F2P games pull the kinds of slimy tricks you’re accusing them of (most just use simple loot tables and RNG), but there’s nothing holding them accountable to say they can’t because everything is opaque.
I played some when they first dropped and the android playstore options were limited. You could see the bullshit weights first-hand if you had enough free pulls. Again, this, along with streamers doing massive pulls, and community-gathered spreadhseets are where I get my information, not from the game page that says '1 in 100 chance of legendary pull!' because, again, it's always been bullshit.
[1] https://thinkcomputers.org/odds-of-gaming-earning-you-money/