Image: Blizzard
Well, here’s some bad news for people who live in Belgium or the Netherlands and are excited to play Diablo Immortal, Blizzard’s next free dungeon crawler to be released on June 2 on PC and mobile devices. Turns out, due to local loot box laws, Blizzard’s next action role-playing game won’t be released in either country.
And it seems unlikely that Blizzard will soon change the game to comply with these local laws, leaving affected players without many options.
As reported for the first time by the Dutch news site Tweakers, Activision Blizzard has silently changed its launch plans with Diablo Immortal. Free role-playing will not be available in Belgium or the Netherlands due to the laws and regulations of those countries. A communications manager for the publisher of Call of Duty and Overwatch confirmed with the point of sale that the game will not be released in the nations listed above on June 2 due to “current operating conditions in these countries.”
In the Diablo Immortal subreddit, a player shared a message from a Blizzard game master explaining more explicitly that Immortal was skipping some countries because of the laws against loot boxes.
“Game loot boxes are against the law in your country,” the Blizzard employee explained. “Therefore, unless the game restrictions change, the game will not be released in the Netherlands and Belgium.”
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The same employee also explained that players could try to circumvent the restriction, but this could lead to a ban on Blizzard.
Read more: Loot boxes are designed to blow us away
Kotaku contacted Activision Blizzard about the loot boxes and the release of Diablo Immortal.
The fact that this situation is more frustrating for players is that Blizzard is said to have allowed people in Belgium and the Netherlands to load the game before its release. Tweakers reports that after the release date of the game was revealed, players in those countries could pre-load the game. However, a few days later the option was quietly removed.
Diablo Immortal is not the first game to break European laws against looting and betting.
We have seen companies like EA face severe penalties for continuing to use loot boxes in places like the Netherlands and the UK. In response to growing pressure on these affordable random boxes, some publishers have avoided launching games in certain countries.
Other companies, such as Rockstar, have turned off certain features related to gambling or in-game microtransactions depending on where you play. Some games, such as Fortnite and Rocket League, have completely changed the operation of their loot boxes or simply removed them completely, which is good considering how these purchases and stores from the app are starting to look and work like casino slot machines. even in big $ 60 games.