Diablo IV is now on Game Pass.
The official Xbox account made the announcement in a succinct tweet a few hours ago. But that brief message holds a lot of backstory behind it.
Of course, when Microsoft first announced that they would be acquiring Activision Blizzard King, the first thing gamers wanted to ask about was if Activision’s and Blizzard’s games would be coming to Game Pass. Xbox’s subscription service had discreetly become a gigantic moneymaker for Microsoft, apparently exceeding the money they make on Xbox consoles themselves.
While Microsoft keeps the numbers on this mostly to themselves, it certainly doesn’t hurt that you can have a Game Pass subscription to play games on PC, or streaming across even more platforms, and not have to have an Xbox console at all.
Now, the first message we got about Diablo IV coming to Game Pass was an emphatic no from Mike Ybarra, last July 2023. At the time, Mike was president of Blizzard Entertainment, the Blizzard division under the parent company, Activision Blizzard King. Mike was also reacting to a rumor that came up because an ad for the title had allegedly appeared in Brazil.
And then, things changed in October of that year. A few days before Microsoft finalized their acquisition, Activision shared this message:
“While we do not have plans to put Modern Warfare® III or Diablo IV into Game Pass this year, once the deal closes, we expect to start working with Xbox to bring our titles to more players around the world. And we anticipate that we would begin adding games into Game Pass sometime in the course of next year.”
Finally, we got the official confirmation that Diablo IV was coming to Game Pass just last month. So that’s the end of that story. But what do Game Pass subscribers have to look forward to, exactly?
The base game remains one of the best titles of 2023, but its live service segment has been struggling as of late. Maybe most Game Pass subscribers will be happy enough with playing through the main campaign, but if you want to keep playing beyond that, Blizzard is currently tweaking the live service segment to bring players back.
In their latest update, Blizzard announced they will be launching Diablo IV’s public test realm a few days after its Game Pass debut, from April 2 to April 9, on PC via Blizzard.net. Game Pass subscribers will still have to make a Blizzard account themselves, but that’s free anyway, and that’s how they can get access to the PTR themselves.
You can watch the official Diablo IV Game Pass trailer below.
