Between the surprisingly exceptional reception to Diablo IV’s latest season, Season of Blood, and the recent start of the Mother’s Blessing Week, it’s been a particularly fruitful month for the gothic fantasy dungeon crawler. This comes fresh off Blizzard Entertainment’s massive announcement at BlizzCon 2023: the game’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred. As a result of these hype-inducing triumphs and several other noteworthy factors, the game’s player count on Steam has now climbed up to an all-time high since it was added to the platform earlier this year.
As of the time of writing, Diablo IV’s SteamDB data indicates that its average player count right now hovers somewhere around the low 20,000s, peaking at 23,037. Both of these stats are the highest they’ve ever been in its history on Steam. And, while a great deal of players enjoy Diablo IV on other platforms, especially Battle.net – asking for players to pay for two copies to play Diablo IV on both Battle.net and Steam doesn’t help either – the growing number of Steam players is still worth accounting for. This suggests that there’s been a notable increase in player interest, which, to be honest, isn’t surprising at all.
Firstly, after the troublesome Season 1 launch of Diablo IV, Blizzard is starting to turn things around. Season of Blood is a marked improvement over its predecessor, with a boatload of new content, balance changes, and a genuine attempt to make gameplay better. It’s a step in the right direction and has made plenty of players want to join or come back. Better yet, the improvements have made it so that more are looking forward to maxing out their characters before the season ends for the first time than before, especially with the addition of the Abattoir of Zir. This speaks volumes to the impact Season of Blood has made on Diablo IV.
However, Diablo IV remains imperfect. It’s all but begging for fans to “settle” and make do what they have in the meantime as the development team is hard at work. A loot filter is still missing, while grinding Nightmare Dungeons are fun, things can get pretty old, really fast. But, at the pace that Blizzard is going, these problems should be addressed sooner rather than later.
What’s surprising is Diablo IV doing this amidst fierce competition. On Steam alone, it has to worry about several other GOTY nominees stealing its player base, namely Baldur’s Gate 3 and Resident Evil 4. With Hogwarts Legacy, the year’s best-selling title, and Starfield, Xbox’s biggest game in a while, all waiting on the wings, Diablo IV’s numbers start to look more solid.
The best part is that we’re just getting started. This week is merely a preparation for the mid-season update for Diablo IV: the Midwinter Blight.
This upcoming event arrives in Diablo IV on December 12, which should only help with the game’s player numbers. Is it enough to convince the millions of fans Diablo IV lost to return in time for Season 3? Probably. It’s already set to give a satisfying conclusion to the cliffhanger ending by way of next year’s expansion. Between then and right now, all Blizzard needs to do is to keep on doing more of the same for Diablo IV, fixing it up and incrementally adding features based on community feedback. By that time, Diablo IV will likely be in its sixth or even seventh season already. Either is fine as long as Blizzard can maintain the current momentum and not to get too greedy.
With a Game Pass inclusion on the horizon (what are the chances Microsoft will okay letting Sony pay to make Diablo 4 available on PS Plus?), Diablo IV’s “recovery” will only continue.
Ultimately though, only time will tell if Diablo IV can maintain its momentum or if it will have to settle for sub-10k numbers on Steam again.
