The beta test for the Activision Blizzard game’s friends and family is having trouble staying under control.
The weekend was a busy one for significant game leaks. A complete 43 minutes of the unfinished Diablo IV were shared on Sunday, September 18, in addition to the first-ever footage from a very unfinished GTA 6 that was posted online in the middle of September. Last month, some footage from the ongoing Friends and Family Alpha Test surfaced, but not anything this thorough.
Sincerely, this is a strange one. It’s video that exactly matches your expectations for Diablo IV, as released on Reddit. It is extremely wide, with a very tidy, condensed user interface in the bottom centre, and a condensed map and quest list at the top right. A character is seen stumbling around in the dark for the remainder of the screen.
Although the screen nearly entirely consists of watermarks rather than actual video, you can still make out some brand-new features that appear to be quite cool, like a Barbarian character demonstrating some powerful attacks. There is a lot more depth in the textures already in place, and there is climbing and jumping across gaps. More Diablo seems to be just what anyone would desire.
As I watch the video, I do find it amusing how much climbing and jumping qualities stick out. It’s utterly absurd that such gaming mainstays feel like remarkable new additions, but this is a series where change happens slowly and incrementally. We want to prevent Diablo from turning into a third-person action game, so if these changes worry you—and they should—know that they merely appear to be more intriguing methods to navigate levels or go up and down stairs. You simply click a button when it is near a gap, not timing leaps.
But more importantly, it demonstrates a game with a lot more verticality than we have previously seen from the franchise. As opposed to being limited to ‘levels’ when travelling up and down, caves feel far more three-dimensional. Since we saw the character creator and class information in August, this leak actually functions almost like an unofficial marketing campaign for a visually stunning game.
Similar to GTA 6, it offers an intriguing look into a working build. The game isn’t due until some point next year, so this is unquestionably far later in the production process. Though it is very endearing to see the vivid green boardwalks and hear the stilted AI voiced dialogue replacements. The low streaming quality of this leak is its worst feature.
There are certain mission spoilers there that I won’t discuss because they are very unhelpful. It’s interesting to note that Activision Blizzard has not yet ordered the removal of the original leak’s files. Perhaps, unlike Take-Two, they recognize the incredible free publicity such leaks offer, despite frustrating their marketing plans… I’m not serious.
In fact, it’s a breathtakingly foolish leak. Given the numerous blee-bloops throughout, whomever decided to stream this to their friends probably did so on Discord and did so while using a heavily watermarked build that was marked with “PRIVATE TEST BUILD” and a specific number. Which means, much like the previous incident, Blizzard won’t be left in the dark about who is to blame.
The bigger issue is perhaps how it can successfully conduct a private alpha test if leaks like this are gonna be so frequent and widespread. Even compared to Diablo III, which was released in 2012, these are quite different times to be creating a video game. It will be fascinating to see how programmers react to upcoming alpha/beta tests.
