WTF?! You might expect the game with the lowest Metacritic user score in history to be a commercial flop that fails to make money, but Diablo Immortal has proved that just because something is hated doesn't mean it's unsuccessful. The microtransaction-heavy mobile-focused title generated over $24 million in revenue in its first two weeks and was downloaded over 8 million times.
The information comes from industry tracking website AppMagic, spotted by PCGamesN, which shows that the game attracted 8.5 million downloads---not counting the PC version---in the two weeks following its June 2 launch. It also made a whopping $24.3 million in that period.
The figure makes Diablo Immortal Blizzard's second-largest earner on mobile, beaten only by Hearthstone and the $5 million+ the card game made in the last month.
Diablo Immortal leveling services and accounts are already for sale
Some other interesting stats include the revenue split between Android and Apple users. The figures are pretty close, with money from the App Store slightly higher ($13 million) than from Google Play (11.3 million). The cumulative ARPU, or Average Revenue Per User, in the first two weeks was $3.12. But it seems iPad owners are willing to spend more; the tablet's ARPU was $6.67.
The US was responsible for most of the downloads and revenue, accounting for 26% and 43%, respectively, of the global share. South Korea was second, generating 23% of all revenue, while Japan was third with 8%.
The stats would be impressive for any game, but they're even more remarkable when you consider that Diablo Immortal's PC version has a user score of 0.3 on Metacritic. That puts it at number 12,468 on the site's user-review rankings---the absolute bottom position.
As most people know, Diablo Immortal is a pretty good mobile game ruined by what is one of the most aggressive monetization pushes ever seen, hence all the hate. It was recently found that upgrading your character fully would cost over $110,000.