Well, here’s some bad news for people who live in Belgium or the Netherlands and are excited to play Diablo Immortal, Blizzard’s upcoming free-to-play dungeon crawler will be released June 2 on PC and mobile devices. It turns out, due to local loot box laws, that Blizzard’s next action RPG will not be released in any of the countries.
And it seems unlikely that Blizzard will soon change the game to comply with these local laws, leaving affected players without many options.
As first reported by Dutch news site TweakersActivision Blizzard has quietly moved its release plans with Diablo Immortal. The free RPG will not be available in Belgium or the Netherlands due to the rules and laws of these countries. A communications manager at Call of Duty and Overwatch publisher confirmed to the business that the game will not be released in the previously mentioned countries on June 2 due to “current operating conditions in these countries.”
Onto Diablo Immortal subreddit, a player shared a message from a Blizzard gamemaster which more explicitly explained it Immortal skipped some countries due to laws against loot boxes.
“The loot boxes in the game are against the law in your country,” the Blizzard employee explained. “So unless the gambling restrictions change, the game will not be released in the Netherlands and Belgium.”
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The same employee also explained that players could try to get around the restriction, but that could lead to a ban from Blizzard.
Read more: Loot Boxes are designed to take advantage of us
Kotaku contacted Activision Blizzard regarding Diablo Immortal‘s loot boxes and release.
Making this a more frustrating situation for gamers is that Blizzard reportedly let people in Belgium and the Netherlands preload the game prior to its launch. Tweakers reports that after the game’s release date was revealed, players in those countries could preload the game. But a few days later, the opportunity was quietly removed.
Diablo Immortal is not the first game to encounter European anti-loot box and gambling laws.
We’ve seen companies like EA faces severe penalties for continuing to use loot boxes in places like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In response to increasing pressure on these random boxes that can be purchasedsome publishers have avoided publishing games in certain countries.
Other companies, like Rockstar, have disabled certain features related to gambling or microtransactions in the game depending on where you play. Some games, e.g. Fortnite and Rocket Leaguehas completely changed how their loot boxes work or have just removed them completelywhich is a good thing considering how much these in-app purchases and stores are starting to just look and feel act as casino slot machineseven in big $ 60 games.