Diablo: Immortal players have reportedly lost millions of XP through a Battle Pass bug that's persisted despite developer Blizzard issuing a hotfix for the issue.
As reported by PCGamesN, players earlier in July said they weren't receiving XP rewards for progressing the game's Battle Pass, which accumulated into millions of experience points being lost.
Reddit user mdkubit posted that, "after today's reset, I completed bounties and finished a Battle Pass rank. The XP animation played but the XP bar did not increase at all." Another user, Revorne-Rev, said they'd ranked up twice "on the Battle Pass and neither gave XP".
These are two of myriad reports, with players discussing varying degrees of the issue. The Battle Pass appears to be working fine for some, while others it works some of the time, but not at all for some.
A community lead for Diablo: Immortal posted on Reddit on July 23 to say that Blizzard was aware of the problem and had issued an update to resolve it. The developer also promised that the amount of lost XP for each player would be calculated and rewarded back.
Reports of the bug persisted following the update, however, with The-Crawling-Chaos saying that "I just levelled my Battle Pass up after the weekly reset and I did not receive any XP for doing so" on July 25, two days after the hotfix. Other users confirmed the same was happening to them, while some said the bug was fixed but they had not been refunded the lost XP.
Diablo: Immortal has faced quite severe criticism from players and critics for its microtransactions that essentially lock the best upgrades behind very expensive lootboxes. Blizzard CEO Mike Ybarra defended the system though, and it certainly made financial sense as the free game made $24 million in its first two weeks.
The issue also appeared in our 6/10 review, as IGN said: "Diablo: Immortal's monster slaying action is visceral and satisfying, and the game offers up a huge amount of gameplay for free. That said, its monetisation model and numerous restrictions sour the end game experience, and leave plenty of room for improvement."
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.