It seems as though eager fans may have a chance to play Diablo 4 sooner than first expected. New reports suggest that files for a Diablo 4 beta have been discovered in Blizzard’s Battle.net launcher and they look to be recently added.
As reported in Comicbook, the beta files were first spotted by World of Warcraft mega site Wowhead, which suggested that while there’s no beta option currently on the launcher for download, it certainly looks as though the Battle.net launcher is being made ready for a beta test to be put in place. Interestingly, Wowhead noticed the use of Diablo 4‘s previous ‘Fenris’ codename in the launcher’s Catalog config files, which suggests that these newly added files are indeed connected to Diablo 4. Either way, it’s potentially an exciting step further forward for those eager to jump into the hellish action in the upcoming RPG.
However, as with all these things, it’s important to keep an open mind, as Blizzard itself is yet to make any kind of official reveal on a release date for the game, nor has it announced any information on a date for a beta.
Most recently, however, Blizzard did offer beta access as a reward to the most diehard of Diablo fans, if they got themselves a free Diablo-inspired tattoo as part of the game’s Hell’s Ink marketing campaign. That’s certainly one way to get early access to Diablo 4. However, for those of us who’d rather just do things the old-fashioned way, we’ll have to wait and see if the appearance of these files in the Battle.net launcher manifests into something tangible sooner rather than later.
Diablo 4 is expected to release sometime in 2023, although we’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for any further news on a potential beta ahead of the game’s release in full.