Hell opens back up in 2023
The deepest dungeons and demon-infested catacombs are open for business again next year. Blizzard Entertainment will launchDiablo IVon June 11, 2025.
The latest dungeon-crawler from the Blizzard crew revealed the date at tonight’s Game Awards 2022. Tonight’scinematic trailerincludes a lot of evil demons, one shining warrior in particular, and plenty of doom and gloom.
Back into the dungeons
Ever since the reveal ofDiablo IVat BlizzCon 2019, there has been speculation of when we might finally see the latestDiabloemerge. Rumors havebounced around, and Blizzard itself had totemper expectationsas to when it might arrive. Asizable leak of the gamedropped not too long ago though, adding more fuel to the fire.
It’s all happened as Activision Blizzard has been caught up in a storm of events. Thelawsuits, thestill-pending acquisitionof Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, andunionization of the QA team at Blizzard Albanyhave all transpired between that 2019 reveal and now.
Adding on top of the pile is a report published today fromThe Washington Post. In it, employees at Activision Blizzard tell the Post that the June 6 date will be hard to meet without working significant overtime. Sources allege mismanagement, including crunch that’s incentivized by company stock shares and DoorDash credits. There are also details about a previous version ofDiablo IV‘s script that involved the rape of a female love interest, in order to have a grittier tone. Employees reportedly fought it, and eventually managed to get this version of the story revised.
Basically, a lot has gone down since that first reveal, and it sounds like development has been troubled, to say the least. We did get somerecent hands-on impressions, and it seems like things are coming together. But there’s a lot of baggage hanging over this sequel now, headed into an actual launch.
