Diablo Immortal gem update leaves players demanding refunds

A Diablo Immortal gem update made to the Blessing of the Worthy legendary gem has angry players of the Blizzard fantasy RPG game demanding refunds for the item

Diablo Immortal - Blessing of the Worthy legendary gem, a white spherical crystal with a gold patterned ring

An update to a notable Diablo Immortal legendary gem has angry players demanding refunds from Blizzard after a clarification showed that an item sold in the fantasy game’s real-money shop was inaccurately described. Legendary gems can often help define a character’s build in the RPG game and the Blessing of the Worthy gem was previously considered one of the most potent, before players realised a discrepancy between how it behaved and what its description said.

Blessing of the Worthy is a legendary gem in Diablo Immortal that, among other effects, promised a particular main feature: “When you take damage you have a 20% chance to unleash retribution on all nearby enemies, dealing damage equal to 12% of your maximum life. Cannot occur more often than once every 20 seconds.” That damage goes up to 28% as the gem is upgraded, too, making it a pretty powerful effect, especially for classes like Barbarians that end up with a rather large maximum life pool. Or it would be… if it worked that way.

Players began to spot that once the gem was upgraded to rank three, the description changed to say that the skill scaled off “current life” rather than maximum life. That’s a very dramatic difference – especially for the aforementioned Barbarians. This is because many Barbarian players like to use a skill called ‘Undying Rage’ that prevents them from dying for a short period, allowing them to fight enemies with as low as 1 HP and stay alive. However, dealing damage based on a percentage of 1 health is demonstrably less cool than a percentage of your maximum HP, which could be up in the hundreds of thousands.

Diablo Immortal community manager SinfulScribe took to the game’s subreddit to explain that “through the helpful efforts of the community” this text discrepancy was noticed by Blizzard, and that a patch is being deployed updating the text for the rank one and two gems “to correctly reflect the existing functionality of the unleashed retribution damage effect scaling off current life at all ranks.” This confirms that the gem is indeed, and has always been, in the weaker of its two described forms. It can still be strong on the right build, but it may well not serve the purpose players had hoped for.

This would be cause for concern by itself, but the issue is exacerbated because the gem has been sold in a bundle on the Diablo Immortal in-game shop for real money, along with additional bundles designed to level it up further. This was already a cause for debate, because the top-level bundle – which was priced at roughly $103 USD – promises an upgrade of the gem to rank four (which, for the record, is still not the maximum level it can be), but it also notes that it requires both of the other bundles (priced at approximately $27 USD and $30 USD respectively) to also be purchased to do so.

Naturally this has already caused confusion in the past, with some players who bought the top-level bundle incorrectly interpreting its description and believing it would give them everything they needed for their upgrades. However, this latest update has players particularly upset as Blizzard has now acknowledged that the gem was incorrectly labelled and may have been sold to players under false pretences, yet there is currently no mention of any sort of refund or compensation for players who bought the bundles.

“While I appreciate the communication here,” explains one of the top-rated and most eloquent responses in the thread, “people, myself included, bought the gem thinking it was based on full life. Blizzard literally sold packs for cash with the wrong description. It’s unacceptable to just come now and say ‘my bad’ and pretend like you didn’t literally just pull a bait and switch.” The commenter calls for Blizzard to “refund all buyers of the blessing packs, or at least give the players the equal eternal orb value of their purchase.”

Diablo Immortal - one of the Blessing of the Worthy bundles in the in-game shop, showing an incorrect description of the gem's effects

“People are maybe the most angry I’ve seen them,” remarks Diablo Immortal streamer and YouTuber Darth Microtransaction, who has covered the game since its release and was one of the players who highlighted the discrepancy with Diablo Immortal legendary crests that marked one of Immortal’s first major controversies. DM says that he himself “bought multiple packs of Blessing of the Worthy gems where it tells you it does something it literally does not do.” He echoes the community call for outright refunds or eternal orb compensation.

Some players are taking matters into their own hands and asking for refunds through storefronts such as the Apple and Google Play stores, but this is likely to be somewhat of a ‘nuclear option’ that could see their accounts placed into Diablo Immortal orb debt and unable to participate in many of the game’s endgame activities such as the weekly PvP event known as the Diablo Immortal Shadow War.

We have reached out to Blizzard for comment, and will update the story with any response or significant further developments on the matter. In the meantime, be careful about how you spend your money and, as always, buyer beware.

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If you’re looking to respec in light of this news, our pick of the best Diablo Immortal builds should help you out, along with our Diablo Immortal tier list. Meanwhile, Diablo Immortal PvP idlers are now being punished by Blizzard for going AFK. We’ve also got all the details on the Diablo Immortal Halloween update and the new Diablo Immortal Telluric Pearls that have free-to-play players worried about the potential grind ahead. If you’re after something new to try, check out the best games like Diablo on PC for some alternative options.