Diablo IV locks in a release date for June 2023

Hell opens back up in 2023

The deepest dungeons and demon-infested catacombs are open for business again next year. Blizzard Entertainment will launch Diablo IV on June 6, 2023.

The latest dungeon-crawler from the Blizzard crew revealed the date at tonight’s Game Awards 2022. Tonight’s cinematic trailer includes a lot of evil demons, one shining warrior in particular, and plenty of doom and gloom.

Back into the dungeons

Ever since the reveal of Diablo IV at BlizzCon 2019, there has been speculation of when we might finally see the latest Diablo emerge. Rumors have bounced around, and Blizzard itself had to temper expectations as to when it might arrive. A sizable leak of the game dropped not too long ago though, adding more fuel to the fire.

It’s all happened as Activision Blizzard has been caught up in a storm of events. The lawsuits, the still-pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, and unionization of the QA team at Blizzard Albany have all transpired between that 2019 reveal and now.

Adding on top of the pile is a report published today from The Washington Post. In it, employees at Activision Blizzard tell the Post that the June 6 date will be hard to meet without working significant overtime. Sources allege mismanagement, including crunch that’s incentivized by company stock shares and DoorDash credits. There are also details about a previous version of Diablo IV‘s script that involved the rape of a female love interest, in order to have a grittier tone. Employees reportedly fought it, and eventually managed to get this version of the story revised.

Basically, a lot has gone down since that first reveal, and it sounds like development has been troubled, to say the least. We did get some recent hands-on impressions, and it seems like things are coming together. But there’s a lot of baggage hanging over this sequel now, headed into an actual launch.