Diablo franchise boss Rod Fergusson is receiving quite a bit of criticism online for suggesting that ARPGs that are similar to Diablo should be labeled Diablo.
In a tweet that has since been correctly proportioned, Fergusson asks whether ARPGs should adopt the Diablo moniker in the same way that a certain class of action RPG is called Souls-like and a particular type of dungeon crawling is called Rogue-like.
“It seems like the 'ARPG' genre is starting to mean a lot of different things,” Fergusson said. “Like 'Souls-like' and 'Rogue-like', I wonder if we could normalize 'Diablo-like' for ARPGs that follow the Diablo formula…”
It seems like the “ARPG” genre is starting to mean a lot of different things. Like “Souls-like” and “Rogue-like”, I wonder if we could normalize “Diablo-like” for ARPGs that follow the Diablo formula… November 22, 2024
Just to contextualize how voluminous the reaction to this suggestion has been: The top response is from streamer Empyrian and says simply, “I don't think so.” That response has 1.4k likes compared to the 728 likes on Fergusson's original tweet. Worse yet, Fergusson's tweet has a whopping 2.2 thousand comments, the vast majority of which are disapproving.
“I wish d4 were a devil,” reads another answer that I really liked.
I'll let you make your own judgment on the situation, but I'll also point out that Fergusson sent the above tweet just hours after Path of Exile 2 had its big Early Access reveal stream; Path of Exile, of course, is Diablo's most direct and formidable competitor. From the outside looking in, sure aspect Like there was a bit of frustration over how much attention Path of Exile 2 was getting that inspired Fergusson's tweet, but that's purely my own assumption not based on any inside knowledge.
It's also worth acknowledging the influence Diablo has had on the action role-playing game genre. I mean, we don't have an entire list dedicated to games like Diablo for no reason. Path of Exile itself is often considered a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 and its lead designer, Chris Wilson, has explicitly said that Diablo was the team's main inspiration. The pushback from the tweet above seems primarily directed at Fergusson himself, who didn't join Blizzard until 2020 and therefore didn't play a role in creating the Diablo formula.
Meanwhile, Diablo: Dawn of Hatred launches on Free Comic Book Day, 7 years after Titan announced it would publish comics set in the world of Blizzard's dungeon crawler.