Regardless of whatever impression the rollercoaster of player sentiment might've given you over the years, it seems Diablo 4 is quite popular. In fact, it's the best-selling game in Blizzard's entire 35-year history, according to a marketing lead at the company.
Lauren Ashling Hill, communications lead for Activision Blizzard in Northern Europe, describes Diablo 4 as "the best selling Blizzard game of all time" in her LinkedIn profile (as spotted by Eurogamer). She also notes that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – this is certainly the 2022 title, not the 2009 classic – is "the best selling game in COD history." Update - this language has since been removed from the LinkedIn post.
Both stats are stark reminders that, whatever outsized space older games might take up in our collective sense of nostalgia, the game industry is several orders of magnitude bigger than it used to be. While Diablo 4's 73% positive Steam reviews are a far cry from the near-universal praise afforded to, say, Diablo 2 over the years, there's no denying that it's made a much larger impact in terms of sheer numbers than its predecessors ever could.
Blizzard has never provided hard sales stats for Diablo 4, but near launch the devs called it their "fastest selling" game ever, and just a few months later revealed that 12 million players had already jumped in. Whatever ups and downs the subsequent updates have brought, they've clearly not derailed that early momentum.
