Blizzard recently announced that Diablo 4 is going to have two “open betas” next month. The first will be from March 17 to March 19, and the second will be from March 24 to March 26. Everyone will who wants to will be able to participate in the second “beta” period, but only those “true fans” who pre-order Diablo 4 beforehand will have the “privilege” of playing in the first period. Please, don’t fall for it. Don’t let Blizzard of all entities define what fandom is, and don’t rush to pre-order Diablo 4 just to try it a week earlier.
While it’s easy to understand why gamers may be losing goodwill from the publisher, most recently it’s been the employees getting the short end of the stick, withthe latest sleightsbeing a massive reduction in profit-sharing, an almost blanket ending of remote work, the return of “stack ranking,” and diminishing the work of its QA and customer service departments. This is all following the news that the company enjoyed another record-setting quarter.
That said, perhaps the working conditions at Activision-Blizzard aren’t terribly important to most gamers. Fair enough, most of us are busy with our own lives and are just here to enjoy good games and get away from the daily grind for a while. There’s nothing terribly wrong with that mentality…so long as the company in question is committed to making good games.
Ever since the launch of Overwatch in 2016, the publisher hasn’t exactly done much for its fans. Heck, even Overwatch hadelements in it seemingly meant to take advantageof enthusiastic players (i.e. lootboxes). Since then though, it’s turned out “bangers” such as Warcraft III: Reforged, Diablo Immortal and Overwatch 2. Put a bit more accurately, it released one of theworst remasters to ever stain the PC space,a blatant cash-grabseemingly intended solely to take advantage of smartphone players and a glorified update that isn’t really worthy of having a “2” in the title. Even worse, Warcraft III: Reforged and Overwatch 2 were used asexcuses to shut down their predecessors,leaving fans no choice but to either bear with the new version or just quit.
Then there’s this whole “open beta” business. After a decade of so-called “betas” delivered by the likes of EA, Activision and Blizzard, it should be clear by now that these “betas” are nothing of the sort. Sure, perhaps they are useful for finding bugs and gameplay issues, but experience has shown that that is not the primary purpose of these trials. Seriously, how many times have issues found in betas wound being encountered again in full releases? No, so-called “public betas” are now, and have been for some time, primarily meant to hype up a game and keep both fans and media talking about it. Also, as we’ve all seen time and time again, they’ve served as convenient opportunities to see justhow much fans are willing to toleratewhen it comes to in-game monetization practices.
The whole process plays out almost the same way every time: beta/demo includes some egregious mechanic or store pricing,the community flips out,the publisher comes out with a template apology and thendials it back just enoughto show that “we’re listening.” The community and media then talks about how nice it is that the company did that, and everyone goes ahead and engages with the slightly less offensive version of the system. Of course, the “less bad” version was the plan all along, and companies likeBlizzard will even defend it.See also the likes ofFallout 76,which had an abysmal launch, yet Bethesda was still comfortable settingridiculous “Atomic Shop” prices.Considering what Activision-Blizzard have spent the past few years doing, can anyone really expect this Diablo 4 “beta” to be used any differently? So please, resist the urge to pre-order this one. Just wait until the second “beta” period to try it.
