These practices, though sometimes received with apprehension, have become normalized within the gaming industry in general. One could argue that presence of loot boxes as well as other real-money transactions in AAA games have created this type of market that is a predatory one, but the more that AAA gaming shifts towards a models of D2R Items games-as services more, the more it has to do with game-based mobile apps that've been within this highly popular realm for more than a decade.
And this isn't just reflected in the use of money to obtain items however, it is also evident in gacha mechanics and disclosure of drop rates among uncommon items. Gacha is using game currency, whether it's free or purchased through an in-game shop to purchase something randomly: pieces of equipment, in the case of Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, or characters in the ever-popular (and persistant) Fate/Grand Order or Genshin Impact.
In the case of Diablo 2 Resurrected it's the use of Legendary Crests (which can be bought or earned) to increase the odds of a gem that has a 5-star rating appearing in the dungeons at the end of the game. Although not all that traditional in its way of presenting (most gacha are performed through "rolling" on a limited-time banner), players are still engaging with the kind of randomness in the same way. In many ways this is how players are engaging in the same way. Diablo franchise has been working towards these types of mechanics from its inception as Maddy Myers wrote a few weeks ago.
Diablo 2 Resurrected also, in no uncertain terms, pulls directly from a "feeding" mechanic that Japanese, Korean, and Chinese mobile games have adapted for over 10 years. "Feeding" involves increasing the attributes, stats, or the rarity of an item by receiving a duplicate drop. The duplicates are fed to an item of the same rarity , thereby increasing the stats overall of that item. Generally five copies are needed as a standard for maxing the character or item.
My first experience with "feeding" was Fate/Grand Order, which was originally released by Japan in July 2015 and earned a total of 4 billion dollars around the world in the year 2019. To make a character the best it could absolutely be, I needed to obtain duplicates of every character. When a particular advertisement came along I spent over 300 euros to purchase the 5-star character that I had been looking for for years. However, I was unable to obtain the identical copies I needed to realize this character's full potential. Since the rate for the most sought-after 5-star characters sitting somewhere at 1.1%, it's no surprise I never managed to acquire a copy the character while playing the game (which I've since removed). At the time of writing, Fate/Grand Order was the D2 Resurrected Ladder Items seventh highest grossing mobile game all time, putting it next to Konami's Puzzle and Dragons. The latter is, as I mentioned, is also a gacha-based game.
