The Game Awards left us the good news that we already have a release date for Diablo IV on PC, Xbox and PlayStation since it will be released on June 6, 2023. Good news that has revolutionized the Blizzard ARPG community but which has left a trail of information that confirms that the only way to achieve this objective will be thanks to a deep sacrifice on the part of the workers of the Irvine company.
Are you sure it will arrive in June 2023?
Diablo IV was officially announced (after many rumours) during the 2019 BlizzCon celebration for what has been, with very little margin, one of the company’s releases that has consumed the least time until the moment it reaches the stores. Diablo III, for example, was released in June 2008 and didn’t finally land in stores until mid-May 2012. So this time it will have taken about three and a half years.
Now, is it possible that on June 6 we will not be able to see Diablo IV in stores? Nearly every source who has spoken with former employees, Blizzard employees, and others who have had contact with the game’s development process says that the only way to honor that commitment is to test the entire staff and force them to have to live a new crunch . You know, those forced closures that require the staff to be fully employed and almost always work more than 12 hours a day.
It goes without saying that this information offered by some media (such as The Washington Post) is not a minor thing, because if Blizzard has been a protagonist in recent times for anything, it has been precisely because it is accused of promoting a toxic culture with employees. , who were subjected to continuous crunch to meet the deadlines set in certain developments and promote a culture of discrimination and harassment.
They can comply, but with problems
The less positive believe that Blizzard will not be able to meet the deadlines that it has set to have the game ready for June 6, 2023, although there is another stream of testimonies that advocates that those dates will end up being met, although at the cost of stability and the proper functioning of Diablo IV , which in this case would require the publication of patches to correct all the problems with which, they say, it will hit the stores.
For example, an employee who is still working at the company confirmed to The Washington Post that Blizzard has reached a point where it is not willing to delay Diablo IV , so they will have no choice but to “go ahead and Find out how much we [employees] are willing to suffer to make sure the game launches in a good enough state.” And if there is something that makes us suspicious, and a lot, it is that “enough” within the same sentence as “good”. Don’t you think?
Let’s hope that Diablo IV arrives on the promised date and, above all, that it doesn’t break… as has happened with Activision’s Warzone 2.0 , which continues to have huge problems performing on PC without making us want to burn our computer.