As if the story surrounding Diablo Immortal couldn’t get any stranger, a new wrinkle has entered the fold. Now it appears that someone or some entity is removing dislikes from the Cinematic Trailer for Diablo Immortal on YouTube.
Shortly after the Diablo Immortal announcement, the YouTube page for the trailer was bombarded with negative comments and an overwhelming amount of dislikes. Fans were letting Blizzard know that this is not the Diablo product they were hoping for and the developer was working hard to scramble.
First, there were claims that Blizzard was deleting comments from the YouTube page in order to paint a certain picture. Since most of the comments were negative in nature, someone was trying to hide that fact.
Now it seems things have gotten even worse, as there are now reports that dislikes are being removed from the Diablo Immortal trailer. Where once there was over 300,000 dislikes on the YouTube video, the number dropped down to 200,000 Saturday afternoon. One “fan” even shared a screenshot showing that the dislikes decreased between 1.3M views and 1.5M views. Currently, the dislike number has risen back up to over 300,000 dislikes, against a paltry 11,000 likes.
While no one is likely to explain what happened, this is an unprecedented situation. Dislike bombs on video game reveal trailers are nothing new – both Battlefield and Call of Duty have faced massive backlash – but a publisher or developer seemingly trying to hide the negativity is unexpected.
Of course, no one can confirm whether Blizzard is removing dislikes or if that is even possible. It’s just as likely that YouTube looked into the accounts behind the dislikes and found a lot of bots or duplicate accounts that were trying to skew the dislike number higher.
Regardless of the disappearing dislikes, it’s impossible to deny that the hate surrounding Diablo Immortal is strong and Blizzard faces a segment of its community that is very unhappy. Blizzard tried to temper expectations regarding its plans for Diablo at BlizzCon but most did not expect a mobile game was all they would get. Frustration and anger were the emotions of the day and many chose to take it out on the YouTube video. And now this business with hiding dislikes and comments is only going to add fuel to the fire.
Diablo Immortal will be available on mobile devices.
Thanks: Borbach