Diablo 4 Patch 1.1 Controversy

Overview

Diablo 4 Patch 1.1 Controversy, also known as Diablo 4 Season One Update Controversy, refers to the introduction patch for Blizzard's ARPG video game Diablo 4 called the "Season of the Malignant" that sparked widespread backlash among the game's player base. Released on July 18th, 2023, the 1.1 patch included various class buffs and nerfs being handed down from the developer team to the players in addition to numerous other tweaks. The update became highly controversial for significant changes that were done which directly affected the pace of the game, particularly its endgame, and is perceived to have greatly slowed down the player progression and enjoyment for many. Alongside the outrage, numerous memes about the patch spread online in the following days, often mocking Blizzard and its dev team.

Background

On July 18th, 2023, Blizzard Entertainment, the creators of Diablo 4, released the patch notes for the first major patch of the game (also dropping that day), which introduced a wide range of changes to classes and the game as a whole (summary from YouTuber wudijo shown below).^[5]

As the first major patch for the game, numerous aspects of D4 were changed that the community quickly expressed made the game worse overall. For example, on July 18th, 2023, Twitter user @Bandid1t0^[1] described some of their initial takeaways from the update, receiving roughly 480 likes in less than 48 hours (shown below).

Online Reactions

The online reaction to the patch by the player base was immediate, with many players on social media, as well as prominent streamers who enjoyed the game, calling out the patch for being detrimental to the game's current playstyle and identity since launch.

On July 19th, 2023, content creator and Twitch streamer Asmongold uploaded his take^[2] on the patch, declaring that the game is being killed by Blizzard with these changes to large parts of established gameplay and earning over 850,000 views in 18 hours (shown below).

Asmongold's video became a prominent catalyst for hate lobbed at Blizzard for the patch in the following days, with previous World of Warcraft team leader Mark Kern tweeting^[3] a snippet from Asmongold's rant on the game to punctuate his stance on why the patch is, in his words, one of the worst ones made in the history of gaming (shown below).

On July 19th, 2023, Imgur user Kaddass17^[4] uploaded a Worst So Far meme variant in which they were declaring that the 1.1 patch wasn't simply the worst patch, just the worst patch so far, showing that they along with many in the community were starting to lose hope in having good game developments made in the future (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References