As announced earlier this month by Blizzard, Diablo IV is now live on Steam with a 25% discount offer set to run until next Tuesday.
Right away, though, it is clear that the game is being review bombed. 363 user reviews have already been submitted, many of which show they were published when the users had only played 10 or 20 minutes. The current average user review rating is 58%.
What’s more, several reviews do not really provide any in-depth critique of Diablo IV. On the contrary, they were obviously crafted by serial haters.
Two of the top reviews simply say:
I know Blizzard gets a lot of hate, but personally, I don’t think it gets enough.
Thank you Gaben for making this negative review possible.
Others are downright insults (with their exact wording censored by Steam’s automatic filter, though they are easily discernible).
It appears a portion of the Steam community is determined to repeat what happened with Overwatch 2, which received a bombing so hard it made the game Steam’s lowest-rated title (only 10% positive reviews) for a while. There were actual reasons to be mad for Overwatch 2, though, since Blizzard really dropped the ball on that one when it discarded the originally promised PvE mode.
On the other hand, while Diablo IV delivered a disappointing first season of live service, the base game is actually great, as evidenced by the overwhelming critical and commercial success.
The game would likely have received a similarly negative reception on Steam regardless of the first season’s quality. These are, after all, the first Blizzard games to launch on Steam’s platform, and a vocal minority of the Steam community has long resented game companies that attempted to make their own launchers. Oftentimes, when games finally land on the most popular PC store after debuting elsewhere, they get the review bombing treatment. Of course, the mixed reviews don’t necessarily translate into low popularity on the platform, as evidenced by Activision’s Call of Duty franchise.
Yesterday’s Diablo IV update 1.2 also marked the start of the game’s second live service season called Season of Blood. There’s a new questline, brand new Vampiric powers, new endgame bosses, a new Blood Harvest Seasonal Event, and more.
Diablo IV is likely to be prominently featured at BlizzCon 2023. The community event is returning in person in early November at the Anaheim Convention Center after the pandemic years.
