Video Games

Diablo 4 won’t be on Xbox Game Pass

Blizzard’s Mike Ybarra dispels a rumor from an erroneous ad

Marco Wutz

Diablo 4 won’t be on Xbox Game Pass
Diablo 4 won’t be on Xbox Game Pass /

Blizzard Entertainment’s president, Mike Ybarra, has publicly denied a rumor about Diablo 4 coming to Xbox Game Pass. This possibility was brought into play by an advertisement for a Brazilian payment app, which connected the new action RPG with Microsoft’s subscription service, saying people could buy the game or get it through Game Pass.

Ybarra personally took to Twitter to write: “This is not happening.”

The ad had already been pulled before Ybarra made his response, but it’s good to have the official clarification anyway.

It seems like the company’s president is enjoying his own time with the game as well, admitting to his hardcore mode character dying at level 59 – that means he had put a good amount of time into the run before death came knocking (there are no revives in hardcore mode, one death and it’s game over).

That fun tidbit aside, Ybarra’s clear stance pretty much follows established company policy – Activision has previously stated similar things regarding Call of Duty. Sony’s Jim Ryan recently stated that publishers hated Xbox Game Pass, because it’s “value destructive.”

Microsoft is of course in the process of taking over Activision Blizzard, though the deal is being contested by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US and the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) in the UK.

Xbox Game Pass is a subscription service offered by Microsoft that enables members to access a vast library of games on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The company announced plans to include titles of Activision Blizzard in the catalog after completing the proposed takeover – a move that potentially may not go down well with everyone over at Activision Blizzard, though they could dry their tears with the dollar notes they are getting out of the deal in this case.

Diablo 4's first season is coming up this month, giving players a taste of what kind of content they can expect in the future.

Published
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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