Diablo 4 has launched on Steam to a mixed response, garnering a mixed slate of reviews despite surging up the best sellers chart.
A rocky launch is likely the cause for some of those early concerns - hours before Diablo 4 Season 2 was released, Blizzard issued a delay due to some "complications" the team needed to resolve. Even when they were ironed out and the Season of Blood was allowed to launch, however, players then ran into issues receiving rewards from the seasonal Battle Pass and Journey, blocking progression through the story questline for some.
"We have rolled out a fix for these issues that will begin to take effect over the next hour or so. Do note that Season Journey progress acquired prior to the release of this fix will not apply retroactively," Blizzard said shortly after. "You will lose no progress made on your Battle Pass, and now can claim all earned rewards from your Tiers. You should also now see progress incrementing correctly on Season Journey tasks."
The other half of the negative sentiment is more focused on Steam users' general feelings about Blizzard, from the rise of the games-as-a-service model to the Activision Blizzard lawsuit, alleging some harrowing stories that former Blizzard staffers have gone through.
"During my childhood Blizzard couldn't get it wrong," one popular review says. "As an adult, they can't get it right."
Another scathing but popular review reads: "I know Blizzard gets a lot of hate, but personally, I don't think it gets enough."
It's not all bad for Blizzard, though. At the time of writing, 57% of the 386 reviews are positive, and in terms of sales, Diablo 4 is currently only sitting behind the likes of Counter-Strike 2 and Football Manager 2024 on the Top Sellers list.
"As a total package rating, it's good but not great -yet-, still worth checking out if you're a fan of ARPGs," one user writes. "The endgame loop still needs work, but they've made plenty of steps in the right direction with post-launch patches. If you go into it expecting 'slightly more complex Diablo 3' you'll have fun. The endgame does not compete at all with [Path of Exile] in terms of content or item complexity, so if you go in expecting that you'll be heavily disappointed."
Diablo 4 is an RPG about numbers, which makes it extra funny to see Blizzard get so much basic math wrong in a now-deleted trailer.
