Blizzard attempts to mollify Diablo IV players threatening boycott over season patch

    
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Diablo IV players are none too pleased about the game’s patch this week, which rolled out ahead of the release of season one today. You need only scope out the game’s Metacritic user score, which has tanked to a 2.9 based on thousands of players coping with buyer’s remorse by review-bombing the game over what they characterize as grindy nerfs to their classes and their fun.

“Maybe we should all Skip Season 1 and see if that wakes them up?” one of the larger threads on Reddit asks. “Just thinking about how they’d react to a real player revolt. Bobby K only cares about money, so the bad press from a player boycott might ruin his day.”

Of course, we know how ABK would react to a real player revolt because it happened in 2019, and Kotick already got his money when people bought the game knowing everything they knew about Activision-Blizzard – at 10M copies sold at a minimum of $70 apiece, that’s $700M propping up yesterday’s investor report.

But regardless of the belated action, Blizzard certainly still cares that its MAUs are in decline and its diehard players are in uproar. The studio has already said it will hold a Campfire Chat on Friday to “talk more about” the “feedback from players.” Adam Fletcher has also announced that the studio will be “removing the level requirement for World Tier 3 & 4.”

Still, the speedy response to the unrest has only caused Redditors to accuse the devs of having “no clear direction.” Far be it from me to pity Blizzard, but it kinda looks like there’s no way for the studio to win this one.

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