Two European countries won’t get Diablo Immortal because of loot box laws

Enlarge / What's in the box? (credit: Getty / Aurich Lawson)

Blizzard's upcoming open beta launch of Diablo Immortal later this week will be skipping the Netherlands and Belgium, thanks to regulations in those countries that consider games with randomized loot boxes to be illegal gambling.

"Diablo Immortal will not be available in Belgium or the Netherlands, and will not appear on Battle.net or the Belgian and Netherlands App or Google Play Stores," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Eurogamer over the weekend. "This is related to the current operating environment for games in those countries. Accordingly, pre-registrations for the game are not accessible in those markets."

Activision Blizzard reportedly let Belgian and Dutch players preregister for the game's public beta test and listed the game briefly on mobile app stores in both countries. But the company quietly changed course in recent months, as Dutch gaming news site Tweakers noticed over the weekend.

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