One of the only announcements at this year's Gamescom, an event replete with games to play but usually light on news (as Keith wrote in last week's newsletter), was that the demon-killing, time-deleting action RPG Diablo IV's second "season" would start on 17 October. That means new stuff for its 12 million players to do – vampiric powers feature heavily. But given that this game only came out in June and its first season of new content started in late July, it also means that its developers will have been working nonstop since its launch to get yet more game content ready to go. I have often wondered how the makers of live service games – "forever games" that essentially wish to monopolise a player's attention over an extended period of time, a still relatively new genre and business model that's emerged in the last 10 years – manage these brutal schedules. Twenty years ago, studios would release a game and that would be it; 10 years ago, they'd be on the hook for a patch or maybe a downloadable expansion, but not such an endless stream of content. So I asked Diablo's GM, Rod Fergusson – who has been running games teams for more than two decades, most famously with Epic Games on Gears of War – how they manage it.

Blizzard Entertainment has released the trailer for the second season of Diablo IV along with the announcement that it's arriving on October 17th. According to IGN, Rod Fergusson, who oversees the development of the franchise, players will get vampire powers and will face against a vampire lord in the new questline during the opening night of Gamescom 2023. Season 2 of the online action role-playing game is called "Season of Blood," because yes, it does feature vampires. Gemma Chan, actor and producer who starred in Eternals and Crazy Rich Asians, voices the vampire hunter companion Erys, who leads the fight against the new threat in the game's universe. The new season will also feature five new and returning endgame bosses, as well as updates to renown rewards, gem and stash storage, making it so that gems no longer take up space, as well as to resistance and status effects.

Publisher Activision Blizzard, responsible for the game this article refers to, is currently embroiled in ongoing litigation in regards to claims reporting a workplace culture that allegedly enabled acts of sexual harassment, abuse and discrimination. Diablo 4 is currently in development but it looks like its release is still a long way off. That hasn't stopped us from searching out the best rumors and the latest news about Blizzard's upcoming hack'n slash adventure. The Diablo series certainly is undergoing something of a resurgence right now. First announced at Blizzcon 2019, Diablo 4 development has supposedly been progressing since. Diablo 2 Resurrected, a remaster of the PC classic, has already been released and Diablo Immortal is expected to arrive on Android and iOS devices in 2022. Naturally, though, we're most excited about the release of Diablo 4 and thanks to Blizzard's quarterly development updates, we're learning more about it all the time. With the recent announcement that Microsoft has agreed to acquire Activision Blizzard, the landscape around Diablo 4's development is changing and it currently remains unclear what the acquisition could mean for the game if it goes through, especially as Diablo 4's release is so far down the line--we're not expecting it until at least 2023. While we wait, though, here's all the news, updates and rumors we've collated about Diablo 4 so far. What could this mean for Diablo 4's release? Read on to find out more.] Bad news here: Diablo 4 probably won't be released anytime soon. At a Blizzcon 2019 deep dive on the game, the game's director said that he doesn't expect the game to be finished anytime soon, "even by Blizzard's standards of soon." Fast-forward to the end of 2021, and that comment still stands after the announcement of an indefinite delay. During Activision Blizzard's Q3 earnings call in November 2021, it made the following statement: "While we are still planning to deliver a substantial amount of content from Blizzard next year, we are now planning for a later launch for Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV than originally envisaged".

Zöe Curnoe, a senior producer at video game developer The Coalition, lets out a long sigh. We've just reminded her about a tweet from Cliff Bleszinski, the former lead designer on the Gears of War franchise, which she has worked on for several years. Gears 5, the latest title in the Gears of War series, has a female protagonist for the first time. "Not gonna lie," wrote Bleszinski. "Seeing a woman on the cover of a Gears game makes me happy. I was told for decades'games with female leads don't sell.'"