BlizzCon 2018 recently concluded, which is the huge convention for fans of Blizzard games and where the company can show off what they have in the works. Passionate fans filled the hall where they anxiously awaited what the company was going to announce as their next big thing. With great fanfare they announced Diablo: Immortal.

A mobile game.

Unsurprisingly, fans booed. Irate gamers who spent hundreds of dollars on flights, tickets and hotels asked the company if this was an out-of-season April fools joke. Blizzard responded asking "do you guys not have phones?", which went over about as well as you'd expect. Nobody in that audience wants to play Diablo on a 5-inch screen.

They don't care about you

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Gaming companies, just like any business, do not actually care what you want. They don't care if you're happy. They don't care if they lose you as long as you're replaced by 2 new consumers.

The company was not ready to announce Diablo 4 (which has been confirmed to be in development), so they announced this. In general, hardcore gamers HATE mobile games. They're stripped down, they look dated, they're full of micro transactions, controlling them is harder -- and gamers hate that.

But the thing is, it doesn't matter. Blizzard very well knows that these people will still buy Diablo 4 when its released, meanwhile they're creating a new game for a different market. Apparently Diablo: Immortal is more or less a re-skin of a Chinese game in the same genre and is being used as a stab at a different market.

You're a bank account, nothing more

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Video game publishers seem to be getting far worse about chasing dollars over creating games their dedicated fans want.

Konami used to be known for their amazing franchises like Castlevania, Contra, Gradius, Silent Hill and Metal Gear, yet today they seem more dedicated to making pachinko machines than console games.

Nintendo wasted years chasing their "blue ocean" strategy by making games that nobody wanted like Wii Music while they let franchises fans are frothing at the mouth for wither on the vine. The last F-Zero game was released in 2004. Nintendo couldn't even be bothered to do a physical release of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water on the Wii U even though the system was suffering a horrible release drought.

EA has suffered greatly due to their recent practices of turning everything into microtransactions and nickel-and-diming their fans to the point where to truly enjoy a game like Star Wars Battlefront 2 you have to spend extra money on loot boxes to have a fair chance when playing online. They don't see fans, they see dollars and they pushed us too far. Now the EA stock price has been on a solid decline the past 4 months, dropping 30%.

There are exceptions

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Developer and publisher Team Cherry released the highly-rated Hollow Knight earlier this year. Not only does the game feature a meaty standard campaign at a retail price of $14.99, it received a number of DLC expansions that were made available for free!

SNK just released the SNK 40th Anniversary Edition compilation, a collection of classic SNK games. It was announced that a few weeks after the game's release, SNK will be making additional games available in the collection and free to download.

Treat your customers right

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Customers will only take so much abuse and disrespect before they jump ship to competitors or find other ways to spend their money. I have no interest in supporting gaming companies that put the dollar over making their customers happy.

Instead, I'll be supporting companies who do show they care about us. Even though I bought Hollow Knight digitally, I'll be double-dipping to get the physical release both for my collection and to support the company who showed they know how to treat customers right.

Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!

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