It’s been a week since the Diablo 4 beta test started and players are already leaking gameplay footage online. What’s funny is that the screenshots have the testers’ identification number all over them, which means Blizzard probably already knows who these people are. Diablo IV | Developer Gameplay Showcase The leaks came from a beta test for Blizzard friends and family, which Bloomberg reporter Jason Schrier says is under NDA. This means they are legally bound not to share information from the publication. However, that didn’t stop some testers, who uploaded screenshots and videos online. They show a relatively useless character creator, the five classes (already announced, including the returning Rogue and Sorcerer class from Diablo I and II), difficulty selectors, and the game’s specs. The trial version is currently just over 67GB, but that could change once the full version of the game is released. Beta tests are meant for developers to do some final tweaking. And we’re still at least months, if not a full year away from Diablo IV’s release date. Listen, I don’t have a horse in this race. But it’s terrible and hilarious to me that these users uploaded screenshots and videos with watermarks everywhere. These watermarks indicate a specific build number, which is likely linked to an actual name in Blizzard’s database somewhere. To the publisher, the leakers may have also attached images that say “John Smith Build Personal Test.” One of the burglars even said: “I really don’t know if I can even broadcast it.” Em. Good luck getting invited to the next beta test, John Smith. Since the Diablo IV beta test isn’t open to the general public, it’s hard to say what the exact implications are. Diablo Reddit moderators speculate that the consequences may include suspensions from Activision Blizzard’s game store. But there’s no official word on what will happen to the beta testers who posted the Diablo IV leaks. Kotaku reached out to Blizzard, but did not hear back by the time of publication. Diablo IV doesn’t have an exact release date yet, but is currently slated for sometime in 2023. It was originally announced in November 2019 after years of uncertainty about the series’ future. Players were concerned that Diablo IV would have the same kind of monetization as Immortal, a concern that Blizzard directly addressed in a stream:[Diablo IV] released as a full-priced game designed strictly for PC and console audiences.” Update 8/8/2022 1:39 PMET: Title has been updated to more accurately reflect the article.
