Diablo 4’s road to recovery hit an embarrassing snag after developer Blizzard published a new video hyping up the upcoming season that was filled with mistakes.
YouTuber Raxxanterax picked up on the video, which was published on the official Diablo Twitter account on Friday, October 13 — a day that proved unlucky for Blizzard. The video was meant to detail improvements coming to the action role-playing game with Season 2, dubbed Season of Blood. Instead it became the focus of a few laughs.
As Raxxanterax shows, the video includes incorrectly labelled dungeon maps, a horse speed comparison that shows both before and after horses trotting along at the same speed, and maths blunders when calculating experience point boosts.
“Blizzard, I’m trying to build some hype for the season, but you’re making it real hard,” Raxxanterax said. “BlizzCon’s coming up, if you want to send me the slides ahead of time, give me an NDA, just to double-check.”
It didn’t take long for Blizzard to pull the video after the Diablo community started to realise just how error-strewn it was.
While this video is a clear misstep for Blizzard, Season of Blood does sound genuinely game-changing for Diablo 4, with a number of improvements that should make season two a lot better than season one. Diablo 4 certainly needs a shot in the arm, given apparent dwindling interest following its record-breaking June launch.
We can forgive Blizzard for being a tad distracted Friday. After all, that was the day Microsoft finally bought Activision Blizzard for an eye-watering $69 billion, bringing Blizzard and its games into the Xbox family.
Don’t expect Diablo 4 on Game Pass this year, however. Activision Blizzard has already said it will work to bring that game as well as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 to Microsoft’s subscription service from 2024.
Diablo 4 Season of Blood kicks off October 17 alongside Diablo 4’s Steam launch.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].