Discord instead of YouTube – this decision is already causing a storm of protest from the community.
They were a fixture in the Diablo community: the Campfire Chats. These were livestreams on YouTube and Twitch where the Blizzard development team revealed new content for upcoming seasons of the action role-playing game and answered all kinds of questions from fans.
These Campfire Chats are now history in their previous form. Blizzard has since announced this both officially in the forum as well as in a supplementary Discord-Post bestätigt.
Goodbye YouTube, hello Discord
Starting with the reveal of the upcoming Season 10 of Diablo 4, the so-called “Sanctuary Sitdowns” will become the primary interface between developers and the community. This event will take place exclusively on Discord.
Blizzard devs Aislyn Hall, Charles Dunn, and Ben Fletcher will be participating.
How the sitdown will work: It will be a large Discord audio chat where you can ask your questions. Blizzard has already stated that due to time and organizational constraints, not all questions will be answered.
Fans are divided in their opinions
The responses to the forum post linked above are mixed. Some users welcome the switch to Discord as a central point of contact for all fan issues, including developer meetups.
Some are also bothered by the previous quality of the Campfire livestreams. However, at least as many fans criticize Blizzard for this move. One notable critic is German Diablo streamer jessirocksuncut.
jessirocksuncut“ rel=”noopener” target=”_blank” data-mrf-link=”https://www.youtube.com/@jessirocksuncut“ data-icon=‘external’>jessirocks, who says he was ”caught cold” by the announcement.
The expert finds clear words in a reaction video: Diablo 4 is being increasingly sidelined by Blizzard and the withdrawal from YouTube is further proof of this, in his opinion.
Also tricky: The Sanctuary Sitdowns aren’t even moderated by Blizzard itself, but by streamer Cliptis. jessirocks speculates: It looks like they’re taking Diablo 4 away from Blizzard – maybe there’ll be a wave of layoffs soon – and then it’ll be sidelined until the next add-on.
In conjunction with the recent and very surprising departure of former franchise head Rod Fergusson, the change in community work is generally interpreted as a negative sign. What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts on the topic in the comments!