Within hours the Diablo subreddit filled with furious threads, one of which crossed 12,000 upvotes complaining that Blizzard was "outsourcing and reskinning games"1. Kotaku ran an interview the day after the reveal in which Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham admitted the company expected some anger but "not to this degree," a quote that became the standard headline on the story1. YouTube reaction videos, dislike-bombed trailers, and meme edits kept the moment alive through late 2018.

The game itself then vanished from the news cycle until a 2021 delay pushed release into the following year5. When Diablo Immortal finally launched on iOS, Android, and Windows on June 2, 2022, the second wave of backlash landed almost instantly4. YouTube channel Bellular News published a breakdown showing that top-tier Legendary Gems could only be pulled from paid Legendary Crests, a loot-box style system, and that fully maxing a character would take a free-to-play player roughly ten years or about $110,000 in real money2.

Twitch amplified the outrage in early June 2022 when World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold ran a live experiment on his channel, spending about £20 on a dungeon modifier and watching enemies drop legendaries, then repeating the run unpaid and pulling nothing worthwhile6. The Belgian and Dutch versions of the game were blocked outright because the Legendary Crest system was ruled too close to gambling under local law4. Lead game designer Wyatt Cheng spent the launch week on Twitter walking back an earlier Reddit claim that there was "no way to acquire or rank up gear using money," arguing he had meant only the twelve equipment slots4.