What you need to know
- Diablo 4 is an action RPG from Blizzard Entertainment released on June 5, 2023.
- Blizzard had previously announced the game would be exclusive to their Battle.Net launcher on PC.
- Blizzard changed course today, announcing that Diablo 4 will be released on Steam on October 17. The game is available to wishlist now ahead of release.
Diablo 4 is heading to Steam on October 17, and you can add the game to your wishlist now. The announcement from Blizzard Entertainment came as a surprise, as it had been stated previously that PC players who wanted to bash demons around would need to install Blizzard's own Battle.net launcher to do so.
Activision Blizzard has been deeply entrenched in maintaining PC exclusivity by only releasing their catalog of games on Battle.net for some years now. That diehard exclusivity mantra began to crumble in 2022 when the Call of Duty franchise from Activision launched Modern Warfare 2 (2022) on Steam. The franchise had been exclusive to Battle.net for 5 years at that point.
Blizzard followed up by adding Overwatch 2 to Steam, though fan reception was mostly negative. Overwatch 2 eventually wound up being one of Steam's worst-rated games of all time.
Diablo 4 has suffered its own post-launch snafus. The game was lauded as a critical and commercial success at release, and our own Diablo 4 review dubbed the game a "Must Play" title. However, the first Season of content—titled Season of the Malignant—brought enough ire from the community that Blizzard was forced to acknowledge their misstep via an emergency live stream.
Diablo 4's launch on Valve's platform on October 17 coincides with the release of Season 2, the Season of Blood. The Steam version of the game will fully support cross-platform play with players on Battle.net, Xbox One, and Series X|S consoles, as well as PlayStation 4 and 5. Steam players will still have to create a Battle.net account to access the game, however. This is standard practice for Activision Blizzard titles on all platforms.
