Even though “ over 30 million people pre-registered for the game,” only around 10 million actually installed it, and given the outcry over recent microtransaction bombshells, numbers have likely dropped even further. To make matters worse, Diablo Immortal may never make that sort of scratch again since its player base may already be on the decline. Granted, Blizzard hasn’t revealed any official numbers for Diablo Immortal, but since the company spent $200 million developing and maintaining World of Warcraft in its first four years of life, odds are Immortal’s costs won’t be covered by a measly $24 million. According to Forbes, the mobile game Honor of Kings made $295 million last month, $280 million of which came from China, while PUBG Mobile grossed $138 million in the country Comparatively, Diablo Immortal made $24 million in its first two weeks without any business from China, reports Forbes, which might sound impressive until you consider that Diablo 3 made almost 10 times that in only 24 hours - and that Diablo Immortal probably cost way more than $24 million to make. It’s no secret that China is one of the biggest mobile gaming markets on the planet. But while Devotion is a niche Taiwanese horror game that audiences can still purchase on the Red Candle Games store, Diablo Immortal is a mobile game developed by (and seemingly for) Chinese audiences, which could potentially drive the title into an early grave. In 2019, the horror game Devotion was pulled from Steam because of a leftover easter egg that read “Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh moron.” China then revoked the game’s publisher’s business license. If true, this wouldn’t be the first time the Chinese government used a shotgun approach to anyone likening Xi Jinping to the fictional character.

Per the outlet, finding itself in deep trouble with the Chinese government, NetEase had no choice but to postpone Diablo Immortal’s release indefinitely in the region. According to Bloomberg, the official reason the Chinese government blocked NetEase’s Weibo account was for “violating relevant laws and regulations” (i.e. Bloomberg reported the story that the Diablo Immortal Weibo account run by NetEase had been banned after posting a statement that, when translated, reads, “Why hasn’t the bear stepped down?” In case you missed all of the internet memes, the President of China, Xi Jinping, has in the past been unflatteringly compared to Winnie the Pooh to the point where he banned the 2018 film Christopher Robin from releasing in the country.

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