While much of the gaming community rightfully casts its eyes on Activision Blizzard for its shocking treatment of workers and sexual misconduct, the redheaded stepchild known as Diablo Immortal has quietly been delayed to the first half of 2022.
The delay was announced not in its own dedicated post but buried inside of a development update a few hours ago. The mobile spinoff of the popular Diablo series was scheduled for release some time this year.
“Following feedback provided by test participants of the Closed Alpha, our team has been tuning core and endgame features. For example, we’re iterating on PvP content like the Cycle of Strife to make it more accessible, alongside late-game PvE content like the Helliquary to make it more engaging. We’re also working to provide controller support for those who want to play our game in a different way,” the update reads.
To explain some buzzwords there “Cycle of Strife” is player versus player (PVP) content planned for those who had completed most of the game and “Helliquary” is the opposite side of the coin for player versus enemy (PVE) in the endgame.
“However, these changes and additional opportunities to improve our gameplay experience will not be realized in the 2021 timeframe we had previously communicated. So, the game is now planned for release in the first half of 2022, which will allow us to add substantial improvements to the whole game,” the announcement adds.
Diablo Immortal was, infamously, debuted at BlizzCon 2018 which spawned countless memes dunking on the game, specifically the phrases “is this an out of season April Fool’s joke?” and “don’t you guys have phones?”.
So what now? Obviously there’s more waiting to do and this isn’t even counting what is happening right now at Activision Blizzard with staff walkouts and downing of tools to rightfully protest the aforementioned misconduct.
Right now we know that “tens of thousands” of players have had a crack at the alpha version of the game and feedback from them is what has prompted the delay to work on improvements.
Aside from the PVP, PVE and controller support mentioned character progression and better accessibility are also on the cards to be worked on.
