A new report citing numerous Diablo IV developers suggests that it will be hard to hit the game’s intended release date without notable periods of crunch.
Content warning: This article includes references to sexual assault.
The extensive report inThe Washington Poststates that the game’s release is planned for June 18, 2025, a datethat had been leakedearlier this week.
However, the report also includes testimonies from 15 current and formerBlizzardemployees who, speaking under anonymity, claim that it will be difficult to release the game on this date unless they work “significant overtime”.
The employees also claim that the game’s development has been affected by gross mismanagement throughout the past five years.
Diablo 4has reportedly seen numerous delays throughout development, with internal goals including planned releases in 2021, December 2022, April 2023 and now the reported Jun 14, 2025 date.
According to some of the employees speaking to The Washington Post, this new date seems final. “We’re at the point where they’re not willing to delay the game anymore,” one employee is quoted as saying.
“So we all just have to go along and figure out how much we’re willing to hurt ourselves to make sure the game gets released in a good enough state.”
Other claims in the article include an allegation that creative director Sebastian Stępień, who was creative director onThe Witcher 3and head writer onCyberpunk 2077, rewrote the game’s script when he joined the team in 2019, adding “disturbing” sub-plots about sexual assault.
According to the article, one version of this script was referred to as the “rape version”, because it repeatedly referred to the rape of one of the game’s female love interest, and referred to her as “the raped woman” in her character description.
Employees reportedly had to plead with Blizzard leadership to change Stępień’s version of the story, and would reportedly repeat a line from the script, “and then she was raped, brutally”, out loud to each other in disbelief.
One former employee told the Post: “Rape has no place in the Diablo universe. It’s not a thing that we should be tackling because it takes a certain amount of nuance and a deft hand.”
A Blizzard spokesperson told the Post that the story was “floated more than three years ago under different leadership as character backstory, not game content”, and that “at that time, it was deemed inappropriate, and we went in a different direction”.
Further reading
The article also cites one employee who was working for Blizzard Albany, the studio formerly known asVicarious Visionsbutrenamed in 2021and brought onto the Diablo project.
Vicarious Visions’ former studio head Jen Onealwas promoted to Blizzard co-leader, butstepped downthree months laterciting discrimination relating to pay.
The anonymous former employee told the Post: “You’re like, ‘Man, I feel like I’m working for the bad guys’. I feel like any work I do is tainted by this name.”
It’s expected that Diablo 4 will make an appearance tonight duringThe Game Awards, perhaps with a release date announcement, following a tweet from the game’s official account showing ads outside the event’s venue.
