Despite a promising start, "Diablo IV" is struggling with operational challenges. Former Blizzard President Mike Ybarra recently shared his thoughts on Twitter about the game. The announcement that the next expansion for this ARPG has been postponed to 2026—breaking their promise of annual DLCs—along with a tepid response to its seasonal mode, has left Ybarra admitting that he "can't see a clear future direction for the 'Diablo' series," especially with strong competitors like "Path of Exile 2" and "Last Epoch" emerging.
According to Steam platform data: while the player peak surpassed 55,000 during the release of the "Hatred Body" expansion, it has struggled to exceed 20,000 since December. As of this writing, the peak number of online players in the past 24 hours was only 5,942 (though many players are likely still logging in via the Battle.net client).
Ibarra blamed three major issues for the problems: rushing seasonal content releases, significant delays in balance adjustments, and an overemphasis on story-driven DLC. He critically noted: "Don't rush just to hit KPIs; the seasonal mode is stuck in a vicious cycle of launching and then spending two months fixing bugs over and over. The team needs to pause and genuinely solve the core issue of lacking endgame content—players build their characters in a week, then repeatedly kill super bosses 500 times for gear, only to wait for the next season. This kind of experience is fundamentally not fun."
Regarding the expansion delay, the former president suggests that the solution is to cut back on storyline investments (as one-time experience content in ARPGs is too costly) and instead concentrate on introducing new classes, new types of monsters, and sustainable endgame content.