Diablo 4 launched on Steam last night and saw users jhave dished out a “mixed” review rating of 55%.
Blizzard’s action role-playing game launched on PC exclusively on its own Battle.net platform back in June and saw record-breaking sales that secured Diablo 4’s place as Blizzard’s fastest-selling game of all time.
Four months later, Diablo 4’s Steam launch is altogether more muted, with users taking advantage of the platform to tell the world what they think about developer Blizzard as much as the game itself. Diablo 4’s “most helpful” review posted in the past day, according to Steam, comes from a user who said: “During my childhood Blizzard couldn’t get it wrong. As an adult, they can’t get it right.”
Other reviews call out a number of issues that have dogged Blizzard in recent times, such as battle pass implementation, costly microtransactions, and user interface issues. Some reference Blizzard’s free-to-download hero shooter Overwatch 2, which endured a number of controversies of its own before it became the worst-rated Steam game of all time.
Diablo 4 is nowhere near that sort of drubbing and, generally, reaction to the new Season of Blood and its many quality-of-life changes has been positive. Diablo 4 is so far yet to crack Steam’s top 100 most-popular games, although according to SteamDB its all-time peak of 3,408 concurrent players is slowly rising.
IGN has reported on issues with the Season of Blood battle pass and seasonal rewards, although Blizzard has now rolled out a fix. Blizzard disabled crossplay between PC and consoles “due to a technical issue”, and it remains offline.
Of course, Blizzard is now owned by Microsoft, who last week finally sealed its $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has already discussed the possibility of reviving old, owned franchises, with fellow executive Sarah Bond recently namechecking Blizzard's real-time strategy series StarCraft.
Now Season of Blood is live, make sure to check out guide to the new vampiric powers and how to unlock them. We've also developed a full walkthrough of the original campaign.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
