The Diablo 4 Steam release is struggling, with mixed reviews and less than 2,500 players

That Blizzard is selling their games on Steam at all speaks volumes about how poorly they are doing.

All of the design talent and experience has been purged from their ranks in the last 10-12 years. They are a trash tier developer and have burned all the nostalgic goodwill of their past successes.

Kotick killed the golden goose, ruined countless careers and lives, and now he gets to leave with hundreds of millions at the end of the year. Capitalism at is finest.

That Blizzard is selling their games on Steam at all speaks volumes about how poorly they are doing.
No, it doesn't at all. All of this was just preparation for the Microsoft acquisition, by having Actiblizzard games in a third party platform as a way to show that they're "not creating a monopoly"
- They why not on epic?
All of the design talent and experience has been purged from their ranks in the last 10-12 years. They are a trash tier developer and have burned all the nostalgic goodwill of their past successes.
What's crazy amongst all this madness is whatever skeleton crew they stuck in a closet to tend to the corpse of D3 has been knocking it out of the park lately. It's like they got a green light to do whatever and started ticking features from the community wishlist. It won't last much longer as after next season it'll just be cycling through previous content. But at least for now, someone over there appears to care.
That Blizzard is selling their games on Steam at all speaks volumes about how poorly they are doing.
And at a 25% discount so soon after launch. It's crazy!
- It's 25% on Xbox too
It's so sad to see one of the greatest gaming companies in history go down such a dark path..
It feels like almost yesterday when I was unwrapping that fresh copy of WarCraft II and being stunned by the CGI intro, seeing the Orcs on their great warships and thinking "Holy hell".
What happened, man? Why does money ruin absolutely fucking everything?
- Why does money ruin absolutely fucking everything?
  Because nobody who gets a sufficiently large amount of it to stop worrying about their finances is ever satisfied with that amount of money.
It says nothing of how “poorly” they’re doing. A big portion of the PC master race crowd are hardcore steam Stan’s that are “no steam no buy”. Releasing on steam brings extra sales that they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.
As for the rest of your rant, well the less said the better. Kotick has made every part of ABK the most successful they’ve ever been.
- A big portion of the PC master race crowd are hardcore steam Stan’s that are “no steam no buy”. Releasing on steam brings extra sales that they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.
  Strange, looking at Steam Charts, the peak player count for them on steam is 3,442 players. Now sure that’s technically more sales, but I have to wonder if it was worth the effort.

To be honest, most people that wanted to play the game already got the game on Battlenet, so obviously it's not going to have large numbers.

And those who were waiting for Steam may have just heard the announcement about it likely coming to Game Pass in 2024.
They’ve waited this long, why not a a little longer.
I loved D1-3 and had the collector editions. D4 I completed Act 1 and haven't touched it since.
- There’s just no soul to the game, I’m the same as you, and it really disappointed me.
  It’s the last Blizzard game I will ever buy.

Is it because D4 is shit? Because it was kind of shit.

I didn't even try it after reading initial reviews.
They sucked all the fun out of the game.
- I love how it’s already 25% off.
  I have 3k+ hours in Diablo II and D2R and 300-400 in D3.
  I won’t touch Diablo 4.

Blizzard really sleeping at the wheel this past decade, they probably should have invested into talent and another IP instead of pleasing their shareholders when Activision was associated with them.

Sucks what business does to moniize creative process/art.

Enshittification. Blizzard used to be good, until billions of dollars became part of the equation, now they're as shit as ubisoft.
It does that to EVERYTHING, not just art. The functional stuff gets bogged down in capitalist BS, too. Just look at DRM. An entire sector devoted to making copying things more difficult just to protect money. Corporations spend so much time protecting profits instead of actually innovating.
- No but don't you see?! Something something free market! Something something innovation! It's good for corps to be cancerous and destructive!
They have a brand new IP coming out in the next few years. Action rpg iirc.
edit: strange downvote for stating facts:
https://www.mmorpg.com/news/blizzard-is-creating-an-original-ip-survival-game-set-in-a-new-universe-2000124180

Blizzard: "Are we the bad guys?"

lol, who am I kidding -- they don't have enough self-introspection for that.

"you guys have phones, right?"
- "So you're saying the breast milk wasn't for everyone?"

The majority of people that want to play D4 already got it through Blizzard's own damn launcher.

Season 1 was terrible, but I am enjoying season 2. It's not perfect but it came with a lot of much needed QOL improvements. And I like the vampiric powers. The cosmetics are still stupid expensive though, so I'm not touching that shit.

There are too many good, reasonably priced games for overpriced, mediocre bs.

People can be dumb. But people have actually figured out that Blizzard is a fucking garbage developer anymore.

Not only that, but most people who wanted to get Diablo 4 already got it through Blizzard's store/launcher. Despite their drop in popularity over the last decade or so, they are still very visible, so it's not like going on Steam exposed the game to many people who wouldn't have been aware of it if they pay any attention to gaming news.
I only get mine from browsing Lemmy and formerly Reddit. I haven't been paying any specific attention to Blizzard but I still knew when Diablo 4 was released and that the Overwatch I paid for has been replaced with a f2p Overwatch 2.

I played the beta and it was the most bland shit ever. Blizzard seems to think making shit boring as fuck and soulless is a good thing? I hate the art style of both 3 and 4 as well, no idea why Diablo games look like cartoon shit these days instead of the dope ass dark moody environments of the first two. 4 is pretty much the culmination of every bad idea Blizzard has wrapped into one

no idea why Diablo games look like cartoon shit these days instead of the dope ass dark moody environments of the first two.
Diablo 2 was cartoony as hell lol. What are you talking about? If anything, 3 and 4 have gone more back towards the originals visuals.
- We just have different eyes I guess, I couldn't agree less.
- Diablo 3 steered the series more towards WoW level of graphics and armour style.
  Diablo 4 is a return to form to Diablo 1 and 2.
  If you think D2 was cartoony then you need to get a CT scan.

This game was not engaging at all for me until like the very end. It has no replay value like the previous installments did. Not really surprising.

As nice as it would be to have it on steam there is just no incentive to rebuy it. It doesn't even take much extra work to get the battle net version running on a steam deck.

Do you know if you can play Battle.net version of D3 on Linux? Does it work on Steam Deck?
- I think the guide I had originally followed was actually for World of Warcraft so I don't see why you wouldnt be able to apply that to Diablo 3 - but the issue with D3 on the deck would ultimately probably be that the PC version of the game has no official controller support.

Why on earth would they release during patch 1.1 and season 1 when everyone has said it's garbage?

Season 2 is OK so far, but it's still early. They actually made it possible to get something done. Release steam version after you've built some good will.

There are people who game, and then there are gamers. Guess which group of people are the ones playing Blizzard games in 2023.

I bought it because I was tired of the launcher and the bnet version was gifted to me. I also wanted to do my part for bumping the numbers for linux players.