Diablo 4 has been available on Steam for some time and was even free to play until today. However, over the last few days there have been an overwhelming number of positive reviews, not all of which can be attributed to the free playing time.
What happened last with Diablo 4? Diablo 4 is currently in its second season and the winter event is coming up on December 5th. Just in time for the sales events surrounding Black Week, you could also play the game for free up to and including December 28th.
Due to the free playing time, Diablo 4 had a greatly increased number of players, as you could now get your own first impression without paying any money. However, with the increased number of players came a wave of reviews from November 21st, the vast majority of which were positive.
Which reviews are criticized? A number of positive one-word reviews were noticed on reddit:
What is striking is that the reviews have the same wording. Additionally, all accounts are relatively new and have similar alleged playing time.
Reddit user nodlimax also linked one of the affected accounts, which allegedly had over 2,366 hours of play in the past two weeks (Steam). Since a day only has 24 hours and two weeks only have 14 days, the maximum playing time can be 336 hours – assuming the account user has no human needs such as sleep or hunger.
At the time of this news, we were no longer able to discover the reviews shown in the Reddit post on Steam ourselves. We assume Steam has now deleted it.
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What could be behind the reviews? Reddit user nodlimax suspects a targeted bot campaign is behind the reviews. With this, Diablo 4 publisher Activision/Blizzard could try to boost the game’s popularity during the free weekend.
The colleagues at VG247.com, however, suspect that this is a targeted test campaign: There are companies that offer influencing Steam reviews as a service. The reviews for Diablo 4 could therefore be intended as a model for potential future customers.
Why did the positive reviews skyrocket even without bots? Users can currently nominate games for the Steam Awards. Anyone who does this will receive a special Steam batch. You can upgrade this by leaving a review for the corresponding game.
The award nomination phase started on November 21, 2023. This fits in with the skyrocketing review numbers. It should also be remembered that only people who think Diablo 4 is good will nominate it. Accordingly, it can be assumed that a nomination will result in a positive review.
While the reviews discussed on Reddit were probably actually created by bots, the large number of new reviews are primarily due to the Steam Awards and the free weekend.
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