What is the mystery of the unannounced Diablo project?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to see anything that even resembles traction over on the Diablo side of Blizzard. Any hint, any small reason to be hopeful we’ll get either a Diablo 3 expansion or, potentially, Diablo 4 makes me perk up my ears. But the fact is, I’ve been down this road before.

Yes, there’s a new job listing for an unannounced Diablo project. A Dungeon Artist, no less! Yay, I love dungeons! But Blizzard hires people all the time, and sometimes those projects come to fruition, and sometimes they don’t. Back in February, Blizzard was looking for folks to work on Diablo projects. We covered them hiring new folks almost two years ago. And that’s great — don’t get me wrong, I love speculating about possible new Diablo content or perhaps even an entirely new game.

But there’s a tendency, and one I succumb to from time to time, to assume that these listings mean more than they do. Just because Blizzard is looking for people for the Diablo team, or hire someone to work on an unannounced Diablo project, it doesn’t follow that we’ll get such a project any time soon. We may not even get an announcement. People worked on Titan for years and that was never announced.

That being said, there have been a fair amount of postings for people to work on this unannounced Diablo project, as the folks over at Diablo2.net have already stated. At one point there were at least twenty-four open positions which have since been taken down. There are currently four open positions for said Diablo project, including one for a Creative Director. That’s obviously a very important position. Now, please keep in mind, I’m neither saying there is no new Diablo project in the works — no one hires this much for nothing — nor am I saying it won’t ever be announced.

I’m simply saying not to anticipate anything until there’s an announcement. While it’s fun to speculate, that’s all we can possibly do with this. What we have are a series of job postings, many of which seem to have been filled, for a game that we know literally nothing about save that it’s a Diablo game. Think about the Fallout 76 announcement — we know almost nothing about that game save its title and that it will be coming out. But compared to this Diablo project, that’s a lot more information. We don’t have a name, a platform, a genre, nothing save that it has not been announced and that it’s related to Diablo in some way, and that it was hiring people for pretty much every position imaginable.

This is not the sign of a game that’s ready for its close up. This is a game very much in the early stages of the process, one that’s still ramping up its staff. The job postings started getting serious back in November of 2017, which is not a lot of time in game development terms. And it could be a Diablo 2 remaster, an expansion, a new game, a Diablo themed mobile game… we really just don’t know.

So yes, by all means, speculate. Be as excited as you would like. But don’t go crazy thinking we’ll get a surprise Diablo announcement at E3 or anything like that. Expect nothing until Blizzard makes that announcement. If Titan has taught us anything, it’s that this is a company that is not afraid to scrap a game if they don’t think it’s working out.