Not to be outdone by today’s industry-shaking Grand Theft Auto VI leaks, it seems Diablo 4 has suffered one of its own. Reports on social media indicate 45 minutes of footage from what appears (but is not confirmed) to be an in-development build of Diablo 4 have leaked online.
It’s not currently clear how the footage was captured, though some on social media have suggested that it could have come from an internal (and heavily NDA’d) Friends And Family build that was streamed on Discord and recorded without the player’s knowledge. The two videos are watermarked so that, if this is a genuine leak, Blizzard will already know whose copy of the game was being streamed. Like the GTA VI leaks, the videos show an in-production build that features a mixture of complete, incomplete, and placeholder assets. Both videos purport to show the player moving through regions from the game’s Act V content — in previous games, Act V was often close to the end of the campaign, or in DLC added to the game post-launch. Given this, in case the Diablo 4 leaks are real, consider everything you’ll see in those videos to be extremely spoilery for events within the game.
The player moves from tomb to tomb, clearing mobs and hunting treasure. Throughout, there are glimpses of menus, items and item stats, inventories, and character upgrades.
On social media, fans were quick to note certain gameplay quirks. like long cooldowns, which felt more in line with the design of Diablo 3 than of Diablo 2, the game Diablo 4 is modelled upon. Some also pointed to the dedicated Shop button in the game’s major menu UI, accessible at any time via that TAB key. There did seem to be an assumption, particularly on Reddit, that a real-money shop had already been implemented even in this early build. Should the footage turn out to be real, this would likely be a button to nowhere at present. Implementing UI graphics, particularly for playable internal builds, is important even when not every button is in use yet. Further, Blizzard has been open about its intention to include a real money cosmetics store in Diablo 4.
For now, we’ll have to wait and see if Blizzard chooses to address the leaks or if it starts to enforce video takedowns. Diablo 4 is currently slated for release on PC and consoles in 2023.
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