In an interview uploaded to a Future Games Show YouTube channel, the developers of Diablo 4 answered alleged questions from the community. The rather harmless and specific questions never existed in this form.
What is the Future Games Show? The Future Games Show is a digital video game presentation show hosted annually by the online magazine GamesRadar+.
An interview with Diablo 4 developers John Müller and Joseph Piepora was published on the FGS YouTube channel on May 25th, which was obviously intended to promote the show, but also the game (via Kotaku).
The expert assessment of Diablo 4 after the test can be found here:
How good will Diablo 4 be? The conclusion of the expert after the test
More videos
What was that interview? On May 13, the Future Games Show posted a tweet on their Twitter account. They write that they will sit down with the Diablo 4 developers in the following week. Twitter users should now write questions to the developers in the comments.
The team was probably hoping for a lot more interactions since the server slam was going on at the time of the tweet, which wowed fans.
However, when you open the tweet, you can see that not a single question has been commented on.
What you can see, however, are several answers from the last few days that link the YouTube video to the interview and describe the questions asked there as “fake”.
Here’s the tweet we combined:
So where did the questions come from? That’s what Twitter user Philtacular asked themselves. He took care of the matter and researched it. On May 26, he posted a tweet and wrote:
So @Blizzard_Ent and @FutureGamesShow released a video titled “Diablo 4 Devs Answer YOUR Questions” but the questions seem… weird. Luckily, they included the usernames of the “people” who asked these questions, so we can easily verify them! SURE there is nothing strange going on.
Philtacular via Twitter
He filled the thread with numerous screenshots from the YouTube video and photos from the profiles given there. It quickly becomes clear: the profiles do not exist, only exist for a short time or are inactive.
He also looked for the Reddit profiles that were named as questioners in the video. And there, too, it becomes clear: the accounts were only created the day before the interview or have never commented anywhere in Reddit threads.
Future Games Show admits mistakes
Kotaku reached out to both Blizzard and the Future Games Show for comment. Blizzard replied that they were not involved in the questioning process.
A community representative wrote on a Diablo subreddit that the interview was conducted on a press tour. The media editors passed on the interview questions and the developers answered them.
What does the Future Games Show say about this? On May 30, the Future Games Show also commented on the incident. In a comment below the YouTube video, they write: “We made a mistake.” The intention of the video was for the developers to answer questions from the community.
Here you can see the interview on YouTube:
Ultimately, however, it was a mixture of questions from the fans and questions from the FGS editorial team. Because some users and team members wanted to remain anonymous, the names were changed and randomly generated.
It has now turned out that some names correspond to real accounts. “This was not made clear in the video and we apologize for the confusion this has caused,” writes FGS in the comment.
“Activision Blizzard and the Diablo 4 developers did NOT pre-approve these questions and were only made aware of them during the interview,” notes FGS. The title and thumbnail were then updated for transparency.
MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus was also allowed to pester the two developers – guaranteed with real questions. Here is a preview of the interview:
The boss of Diablo 4 would play the formerly worst class if he was no longer allowed to change