What's the old saying? As soon as those playtesters were invited, they flooded Reddit (opens in new tab) to post about it, apparently in defiance of the big bright word "CONFIDENTIAL" written in the email.

Blizzard, according to an update the company released last month (opens in a new tab), has been sending out beta invitations to players who "have recently spent a significant amount of time in the end-game experience of Diablo II: Resurrected, Diablo III, and Diablo Immortal". The beta invitations were sent out on a limited basis. In the very same update, it was also noted that the beta "will be conducted in secret, meaning that invited players will not be able to publicly discuss or share their gameplay experience." I see.

The Diablo 4 sub-Reddit has already had to crack down on posts by excited beta participants violating the NDA (opens in new tab), but the cat is out of the bag. The Internet is already flooded with takes, screenshots, and gameplay videos about the Diablo 4 post campaign. On the other hand, so far, most of them have been quite favorable, and perhaps have eased Blizzard's wounded credibility a bit.

This is not the first Diablo 4 leak; 40 minutes of gameplay (open in new tab) footage was leaked last month, showing a Barbarian character trudging through a thinly textured, combat-heavy test build. With so much footage and information about the game already out there, Blizzard's insistence that testers keep everything a secret is like slamming the barn door after a horse runs away and uploads its adventures to YouTube.

Well, even the pretense of secrecy won't last long; Diablo 4 will begin public testing in early 2023, and the game itself will launch the same year. That is, if it doesn't leak first.