Blizzard Entertainment has clarified Diablo 4 will not be coming to Xbox Game Pass in the near future. The rumor started yesterday when a banner appeared on a Brazilian payments app that linked the title with Game Pass. As it turns out, this was an error.
Blizzard’s Mike Ybarra denies the Xbox Game Pass rumor
The rumor started at PICPAY when they posted a banner that claimed Diablo 4 was “available now” and players could “get it now or play it through Xbox Game Pass.” The banner was removed shortly after posting but not before it was reposted in numerous places (like Shacknews), including Twitter. Mike Ybarra, Blizzard Entertainment’s president, simply replied to the Twitter rumor that “this is not happening.”
While Diablo 4 is not coming to Xbox Game Pass in the near future, it’s definitely possible the game will appear on the service at a later date. A California judge has ruled today that Microsoft can close its acquisition of Activision Blizzard after denying the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) request for a preliminary injunction to stop the deal from happening.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has also agreed to halt legal action to enter further negotiations; the CMA had also previously blocked the deal. While Microsoft will still face an antitrust case from the FTC too, the publisher is now free to close their takeover deal.
When the takeover deal is finalized, Activision Blizzard’s family of studios will join the Xbox Game Studios team. Like all of the Xbox first-party games from studios like Bethesda, Turn 10 Studios, and 343 Studios, future games will be added to Xbox Game Pass on day one. Previous games from the studios were also added to the subscription service, and it’s likely this will eventually happen with Diablo 4.
