A recently released video featuring some of the developers behind Diablo 4 playing the game has caused an uproar in the community, with fans of the game in disbelief at how developers play their own game.
Diablo 4‘s developers have made a real effort to get more involved with the community and show that they’re listening to feedback — something that’s paid off for them in the past.
Their dev chats have been well-received by the community, and, though sentiment at the time was that Diablo 4 Season 1 needed some work, transparency from the developers gave people faith that these issues could be fixed.
However, a recent video that showed some of the developers behind Diablo 4 playing the game for themselves has caused a stir in the community. In short, people are blasting the developers for their level of skill at Diablo 4.
Diablo 4 devs under fire for being “bad” at the game
There’s a lot that goes into making a video game. From art direction and narrative writers to UI and sound design, there are many roles on the dev team that don’t require the developer themselves to be good at playing games — or even to play video games at all.
However, footage of two designers behind Diablo 4’s dungeons is making players question the skill level of developers who are designing the game’s encounters.
This has led to an outcry from figures in the community and average Diablo players who were left dumbfounded by their gameplay.
Though YouTube’s dislikes are a bit inconsistent considering you need an extension to see them these days, the current dislike ratio on the video sits at over 20k dislikes and around 600 likes. Even if this number isn’t completely accurate, it indicates just how much backlash the footage has incurred from the community.
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Their criticism was scathing.
“We’ve all spent years wondering ‘What is wrong with Blizzard’ and now we understand everything. Incredible.” said one commenter.
“Devs spamming basic ability with a full resource bar then dying on WT1 at level 50 in a normal dungeon… yep. It all makes sense now.” said another, specifically criticizing what they perceive as the devs not understanding basic game mechanics.
A post about this video has also gained traction on Reddit, with people who play the game wondering how this video even got released in the first place.
“Lmao they seriously recorded then edited this and still thought it was a good idea to post this.” said one Redditor.
Another Redditor claimed that these two were set up to fail. “Honestly not everyone plays video games. No everyone should be good at it. Even developers shouldn’t be required to be good at games. But for the love of God if you are doing a live stream you definitely should put someone on who at least played solitaire. This is just atrocious. This implicates the PR department who organized all this s*** on top of the development team.”
At the time of writing, Blizzard has yet to comment on the community backlash from the video. However, community pillar Asmongold has given his opinion on the whole situation, with him feeling bad for the developers and slamming Blizzard for releasing the video.