Diablo Immortal Impression: It Looks Like A Chinese Ripoff Of Diablo?

Diablo Immortal was probably one of the biggest announcements that Blizzard Entertainment made at BlizzCon yesterday. However, fans are not as excited as one might think. Although the developers have said many times that Diablo IV is not coming any time soon, many people still feel let down about this mobile Diablo game.

On several forums, such as Reddit and YouTube comments, fans are finding more and more reasons to criticize the game. Some claim that Blizzard and its partner NetEase simply took Crusaders of Light, another RPG from NetEase, and reskin it into Diablo characters and environment. However, Blizzard insists that it “built Diablo Immortal from the ground up for iOS/Android.”

These claims from fans come from a couple of things. For one, Diablo Immortal has the exact same button placement as Crusaders of Light, and both have the image of the player’s character on the top left of the screen. NetEase being a Chinese company probably contributes to the negative impression as well, since the country has a reputation for making lazy and cheap games.

Reskin or best practices?

Diablo Immortal is not out yet, so it is too early to compare it to Crusaders of Light. However, many fans are already insisting that it is a complete reskin. A reddit user by the name of Whitw0rth123 says that the user interface is completely the same, and some abilities shown in the Diablo trailer look similar to Crusaders of Light as well.

It seems that the user interface is the thing that most fans are criticizing. However, saying that it is a copy just because it looks the same is flawed logic. The reason Blizzard and NetEase decided to use a similar control could simply be because they know it works. Furthermore, the interfaces don’t even look that similar aside from the placement of the skill buttons. Many elements are in different places. That is not even considering the fact that Crusaders of Light probably drew inspiration from the original Diablo games; so basically saying the two games look similar is like saying Diablo looks like a game that tries to look like Diablo.

So what if it is really a reskin?

Even if Diablo Immortal is indeed a reskin, what is the matter? Whether it copied another game or not has nothing to do with the game’s quality. If it fails to live up to the reputation of its predecessor, then we can criticize it, regardless of how it was made. On the other hand, if it is a good game with satisfying action, compelling story and great characters, then who cares if the developers really did use the design of another game to make it?