The announcement of Blizzard’s new game Diablo: Immortal over the weekend at Blizzcon, saw a huge section of the fanbase kicking up a fuss.
The reason? It’s a mobile game. Yikes.
The backlash came from the fact that many people felt Blizzard were building up to something bigger, and the fact Diablo: Immortal was announced as the showstopper, left a bitter taste in many mouths. Especially when wild rumours of Diablo 4 had been swirling for some time.
Studio co-founder, Allen Adham, recently spoke to Kotaku about the event, saying, while they expected some unrest from fans, they were still surprised at the extent of it:
We know our audience here is passionately PC and console-focused. We’ve also seen this before. We saw a similar response when we announced that we were bringing Diablo to console, and we saw a similar response to the announcement of Hearthstone.
In an attempt to play down the reaction, Adham continued:
They [the community] love what they love and want what they want. That passion, it’s actually what drives us, and we feel it too.
It’s why we make games and why we’ve made games for almost three decades now — and why our community is so passionate about our franchises.
I understand their feeling and wish we could share more about all the amazing things we’re doing, not just with
the Diablo franchise but across the company as a whole.
Acknowledging the announcement of Diablo 4 was very much on people’s minds, Adham reiterated how Blizzard were still working on many, as yet unannounced Diablo projects, but stopped short of confirming anything else.
Pre-registration for Diablo: Immortal is now open via the Google Play Store but there’s no release date just yet.
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