Internet's Suspicions About 'Fake' Diablo 4 Fan Questions Were Just Confirmed
Blizzard's upcoming continuation of the "Diablo" series launches as early as June 1 for some players, and the advertising department has really turned it up to 11 as the "Diablo 4" release date approaches. Fans have seen a new wave of trailers hit the internet, including a series of "Diablo" history lessons narrated by Ralph Ineson's character Lorath, as well as an enormous billboard teaser in New York City that depicts Lilith in 3D. Tons of information about "Diablo 4" has been revealed in recent developer interviews, too, but not all was as it seemed with one recent dev chat.
On May 25, the official Future Games Show YouTube channel, FGS, uploaded an interview with "Diablo 4" game director Joseph Piepiora and art director John Mueller. The video was originally titled "Diablo 4 devs answer YOUR questions," but viewers noticed that there was something up with the questions and the accounts that posted them. For instance, a clip from Twitch streamer Quin69 pointed out that many of the questions seemingly came from fake account names, which sparked a greater debate on Reddit. For instance, one commenter said that they didn't care about the usernames, but disliked that the questions came off as "obviously scripted."
All the questions in Blizzards D4 QnA video are fake.
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u/Shrabster33 in
diablo4
Some fans instantly blamed Blizzard and believed the company gave questions to its own team to avoid using ones from real fans, though others were quick to point out that Blizzard didn't upload the interview. As it turns out, many internet users' suspicions were confirmed on May 30, when FGS left a new YouTube comment explaining the situation.
FGS explains the situation, but fans are left wondering why?
The video has now been retitled from "Diablo 4 devs answer YOUR questions" to the simpler (and more correct) "Diablo 4 Developer Interview." In a comment left below the original video, FGS said that the intent was to show the devs reacting to a mix of questions from the community and the FGS editorial team, but that the original title didn't clearly state that.
FGS also writes that some users who submitted questions wanted to remain anonymous, which was why randomly generated usernames were used in the video instead of their real ones. However, some of these usernames did lead back to real accounts, ones that had nothing to do with the "Diablo 4" interview and were otherwise inactive.
"Activision Blizzard and the 'Diablo 4' developers did NOT pre-approve these questions and were only made aware of them during the interview itself," FGS explains. "We did not make this distinction between community-led and FGS-led editorial team questions clear, so have updated the video's headline and thumbnail for transparency."
Though some "Diablo 4" fans were initially up in arms over the possibility of Blizzard making up "fake" fan questions, it turns out that this was more of an issue of explaining the video's purpose more clearly in its title. However, one question still on viewers' minds is why fake Twitter accounts were used at all, as FGS could have just used abbreviated names, initials, or simply not shown names for those questions.