10 EXACT Moments Video Game Fans Tapped Out

7. Do You Guys Not Have Phones? - Diablo Immortal

Diablo Immortal Announcement
Blizzard

There are a few things guaranteed to go down like a lead balloon when it comes to a highly anticipated announcement and those things can be summed up into three phrases, “free-to-play”, “mobile game”, and “microtransactions”.

And what do you know, while hopeful Blizzcon 2018 attendees bent their ear praying for news of Diablo IV, they got the trifecta with the announcement of Diablo Immortal.

You have to feel a little bad for game director Wyatt Cheng as by all accounts Diablo Immortal is a fully-fledged Diablo experience, it just happens to be on mobiles where nobody really wanted it to be. Especially when a PC and console-based Diablo game hadn’t been released for six years at this point.

What gamers in the room and around the world got was a mobile game ad when their expectations had been way up. While the game has now come to PC with some rampant microtransactions, at the time there were no plans to bring it to any platform other than mobile, at which point Cheng responded to booing with the infamous phrase, “Do you guys not have phones?”

It’s easy to point at the impending release of Diablo IV now and see that fans are clearly tapping back in, but there was a dark five years in the middle there.

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Contributor
Contributor

Jess has been a journalist and content creator in the games industry for over 15 years and has been WhatCulture's resident Australian import and sorry cop since 2020, upping the quotient of swearing and apologising in WhatCulture Gaming's annual blooper videos considerably. She previously worked at GameSpot for 10 years, most notably hosting GameSpot News in addition to E3 live shows, and PAX panels. She regularly livestreams a variety of games on her 'jessmcdonell' YouTube and Twitch channels and hosts the 'Do It On The Day' podcast. She has won awards for her news and feature work in gaming as well as an accolade for her comedic writing (likely an admin error). She can be found on X at @jessmcdonell and Instagram at @jessicamcdonell sharing her current videogame fixations, industry insights, and videos of her cat, Karma.