Diablo: Immortal will no longer be published in Belgium or the Netherlands because loot boxes are illegal in both countries.
The long-awaited mobile game (and now for PC) finally arrives on June 2, but developer Activision Blizzard canceled the launch in both European countries a few days before its release date.
As reported by gamesindustry.biz and confirmed to Eurogamer, Diablo Immortal will not be available there due to “current operating conditions in these countries”, as Belgium and the Netherlands consider the loot boxes to be bets and therefore they are illegal.
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“Diablo Immortal will not be available in Belgium or the Netherlands, and will not appear on Battle.net or the Belgian and Dutch application or Google Play Stores,” a spokesman told Eurogamer.
The ban was put in place in 2018 and is basically only intended to affect loot boxes that contain content that can be sold for money.
It is unclear whether the loot items will be sold in the secondary market in Diablo: Immortal (or if this will be possible in the game), but it seems that Activision Blizzard has some reason to believe that this will be the case and has therefore banned the game from these territories as a whole.
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Diablo: Immortal was announced at BlizzCon 2018 and was rumored to be released on June 30 after a date appeared for those who had previously registered for the game on Apple devices.
Almost immediately it was met with a negative reception from fans due to its mobile-only plans, and then-Blizzard Entertainment president J. Allen Brack said the company knew that “basically our roots are PC” as a result of revelation.
However, once the game reached alpha, we said it was a good time, although it had some issues.
Brack resigned after Activision Blizzard last year received a lawsuit for discrimination and harassment from the state of California, the first in a long series of allegations against the company. .
Ryan Dinsdale is a self-employed IGN who occasionally remembers tweeting @thelastdinsdale. He will talk about The Witcher all day long.