Category: Video Games

Blizzard revealed that Diablo 4 is the company’s fastest-selling game of all time. Although, this milestone has some caveats.

While Blizzard didn’t provide any specific sales numbers, Diablo 4 has been played for 93 million hours since its early access launch on June 1.

“This is a moment years in the making for the Diablo 4 team,” said Rod Fergusson, Diablo general manager, in a statement. “We’re extremely proud to offer players the richest story ever told in a Diablo game.”

He continued: “Since the game was first announced in 2019, the support from millions of players around the world drove us toward this release of our dark vision of Sanctuary. Hail Lilith, Blessed Mother.”

The fires of Hell burn bright ?#DiabloIV is the fastest selling Blizzard game of all-time. pic.twitter.com/L4pdjVnWFE

— Diablo (@Diablo) June 6, 2023

It’s once again worth noting that Diablo 4 has been out for four days before its official release date of June 6. So Blizzard is‌ presumably counting sales from early access members in addition to day-one purchases from everyone else.

The previous record holder for this feat within Blizzard was the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands expansion with 3.7 million units sold on its first full day on PC. However, Diablo 4 was released on multiple platforms.

Diablo 4 also currently has two expansions in the works. In IGN’s Diablo 4 review, we said, “Diablo 4 takes the strategy of refining things the series already did so well rather than giving it a more substantial overhaul, and that careful and reverent path has shaped this massive sequel into one of the most polished ARPGs ever created, which makes slicing through the legions of the damned a hell of a good time.”

Looking for more info? Check out our interactive Diablo 4 map to start tracking your progress as you play.

George Yang is a freelance writer at IGN.

Respawn’s Jedi: Survivor included a ton of new and returning characters completely crucial to Star Wars Canon but perhaps none more important than Turgle.

The giant froggy menace grabbed the attention of Star Wars fans for his strangely charismatic shenanigans, and now Jedi: Survivor director Stig Asmussen has teased his return in the future.

An Xbox Achievement removed from Homestead Arcana was never meant to be in the game according to developer Serenity Forge, leading to the perhaps unprecedented decision to delete it.

Speaking to IGN, Serenity Forge founder and executive producer Zhenghua Yang apologised for the Achievement’s removal causing frustration and confusion.

“The achievement was the result of some miscommunication between our development team and Skybound’s production team and it was never supposed to be in the game to begin with,” he said.

“We at Serenity Forge care very deeply about our Xbox fans as well as the amazing folks on the Xbox team and we’re really sorry that this caused so much trouble and confusion.”

The response follows a Eurogamer report that flagged the removed Achievement. Homestead Arcana players on Xbox noticed their Gamerscore jump up to 1,000 of 1,000 despite them not unlocking the final Achievement in the game.

Reporting the anomaly on Achievement tracking website TrueAchievements, fans soon realised that a deliberate move had been made to remove the You Can’t Be Too Prepared Achievement altogether. This was a near-impossible unlock for players as it required the crafting of hundreds of items, with some reporting a glitch that stopped it being achieved altogether.

It was unclear at the time who called for the Achievement to be ruled, if it was the developer or Microsoft, but it appears to be the former based on Yang’s comments to IGN.

Removing Achievements is practically unheard of otherwise, and unless Microsoft has done so for a game that’s gone unnoticed, hasn’t happened before Homestead Arcana.

Announced at the ID@Xbox Showcase last September, Homestead Arcana promised to blend an exploration-based farming sim with a magic-based RPG, letting players plough fields and cast spells side by side.

Luis Joshua Gutierrez is a freelance writer who loves games. You can reach him at @ImLuisGutierrez on Twitter.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Editor’s Note: This article previously claimed Microsoft removed the Achievement while that information was not clear. IGN regrets the error and has updated the article with a statement from the developer.

Diablo 4 is experiencing further log-in issues as new players flood the servers.

Diablo 4: Ultimate Edition owners enjoyed four days of relatively smooth-sailing early access. Now Diablo 4 is available to all and launch players are flooding Blizzard’s servers, further log-in issues are beginning to emerge.

“Game servers are down again,” said one Reddit user. “I was teleporting and got stuck on a loading screen. Now I can’t load into the game, getting error 30000. Oh well.”

Unfortunately, some were hit harder than others. When Hardcore mode characters die, they’re gone forever, which makes disconnections even more stressful.

“I literally just lost my [Hardcore] character 95% through the campaign cause the game [disconnected] me during one of the final boss fights,” said a Reddit user.

“Bro when it went down earlier, I was just creating my character,” said another Reddit user. “I said whatever, I’ll go play something else. I LITERALLY just logged back to try it again and this happened.”

Even old-school LAN parties are affected. Diablo 4 is an always-online game, meaning local LANs can be struck with dreaded log-in server issues. “We were stuck queued for hours and ended up playing the Monster Hunter board game to pass the time,” they said.

According to Blizzard Customer Service, the company is working on log-in problems.

“We’re currently investigating an issue affecting our authentication servers, which may result in failed or slow login attempts,” it confirmed on Twitter.

[#DiabloIV] We’re currently investigating an issue affecting our authentication servers, which may result in failed or slow login attempts.

— Blizzard CS – The Americas (@BlizzardCS) June 6, 2023

Diablo’s global community development director Adam Fletcher also chimed in on Twitter. “We see the login/server issues. Team is on it,” he said. “Seeing some improvement but team is still continue to work through the night on the issues.”

We see the login/server issues. Team is on it. ?

— Adam Fletcher (@PezRadar) June 6, 2023

eanwhile, Diablo 4’s mounts are causing problems too. It seems if you’re not getting kicked off your server, it’s likely you’ll end up kicked off your mount.

Want to read more about Diablo 4? Check out the player who managed to hit level 100 already and find out all about the game’s first big balance update.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.