Diablo franchise boss Rod Fergusson is taking a fair bit of heat online for suggesting ARPGs that are similar to Diablo should be labeled Diablo-likes.
In a tweet that's since been properly ratio'd, Fergusson asks whether ARPGs should adopt the Diablo-like moniker in the same way that a certain breed of action-RPG is called a Souls-like and a particular type of dungeon crawler is called a Roguelike. "Feels like the genre of 'ARPG' is starting to mean a lot of different things," Fergusson said. "Much like 'Souls-like' and 'Rogue-like', I wonder if we could normalize 'Diablo-like' for ARPGs that follow the Diablo formula..." Feels like the genre of "ARPG" is starting to mean a lot of different things.
Much like "Souls-like" and "Rogue-like", I wonder if we could normalize "Diablo-like" for ARPGs that follow the Diablo formula...November 22, 2024 Just to contextualize how voluminous the backlash to this suggestion has been: the top reply is from streamer Empyrian and it reads simply: "I don't think so." That reply has 1.4k likes compared to the 728 likes on Fergusson's original tweet.
Worse yet, Fergusson's tweet has a whopping 2.2k comments, the overwhelming majority of which are disapproving. "I wish d4 was a diablo like," reads another highly liked reply.
I'll leave you to make your own judgment call on the situation, but I will also point out that Fergusson sent out the above tweet just hours after Path of Exile 2 had its big Early Access reveal stream; Path of Exile of course being Diablo's most direct and formidable competitor.