Rod Fergusson has been at Blizzard since 2020 and is currently responsible for the Diablo franchise.
Rod Fergusson, the current boss of the Diablo series, is with the fourth part of the series very satisfied
. But with a simple tweet he got himself in trouble.
Fergusson suggested that action RPGs that follow Diablo's hack-and-slay formula should be called “Diablo-like” in the future:
Link to Twitter content
But while terms like “Soulslike” or “Roguelike” have become established, the community reacts to Fergusson's initiative primarily with ridicule and rejection.
A very bad time
Particularly unfortunate: The tweet went online just a few hours after the endgame reveal of Path of Exile 2, which was celebrated by many genre fans – probably Diablo's most direct competitor. The fact that Fergusson wants to bring Diablo to the fore at this moment seems to many like a desperate attempt to draw attention back to Blizzard's own action-RPG series.
18:07
Path of Exile 2 – Preview video for the early access version of the action RPG hope
Of course, there's no denying that Diablo and Diablo 2 made the action RPG genre what it is today. Games like Path of Exile owe their success to the series – the developers themselves have repeatedly emphasized that Diablo 2 was their main inspiration.
But the community sees Fergusson's proposal as just a PR stunt that has backfired.
Sounds like someone is a little salty about the recent news…
I wish D4 was a Diablo-like
.This tweet single-handedly shows how disconnected Blizzard executives are from the real world.
I fear that after Diablo II you have butchered the brand so much that it will remain ARPG forever.
Some critics are also bothered by the fact that Fergusson has only been at Blizzard since 2020 and therefore has no direct connection to the creation of the old Diablo games that defined the genre. His tweet is therefore perceived as an attempt to associate himself more closely with Diablo's legacy than is actually appropriate for his role.
And even though we at GameStar have been using terms like for decades Diablo-Klon
to describe games that closely follow Blizzard's recipe for success, that doesn't mean that Diablo is automatically the benchmark in the genre.
Rather, it is a practical shortcut that makes it clear that a game adopts the basic mechanics that shaped Diablo – slashing hordes of monsters from an iso perspective and collecting tons of loot.
But will the term “Diablo-like” ever gain traction? The chances couldn't be worse at the moment.
