Diablo: Immortal, the recently-announced mobile iteration of the Diablo franchise, has not been taken well by the community, and as these things usually go, the backlash from the fans resulted in a hypothetical financial loss for Activision-Blizzard.
In case you're out of the loop, Blizzard decided it would've been a good idea to use their main time slot on the biggest Blizzard event of the year to reveal a Diablo-themed Android/iOS game that's not even developed in-house. Cue a staggeringly hostile reaction from the audience.
According to a recent financial report by Bloomberg, Activision-Blizzard's shares were down by up to 7.2% with the trading closure of the first day since Blizzard's Diablo: Immortal announcement at BlizzCon. A truly staggering loss, in light of how violent a reaction Blizzard got from the fans.
As it stands, the Activision-Blizzard stock is "on track for its lowest close since January", though prominent analysts claim that Diablo: Immortal will draw in the hardcore Asian mobile audiences, which will end up a financial success for Blizzard.
It is worth noting that Blizzard have also been hinting at the fact that Diablo 4 is currently in active development, though their reasoning behind not announcing this as well, as Bethesda did with their Blades/TES VI announcement, is befuddling.
