Diablo Immortal delayed to 2022

A Diablo Immortal image. — (Image credit: Blizzard)

We played Diablo Immortal, the controversial mobile spin-off, back in December during a technical alpha, and found an action-RPG that was a surprising amount of fun to play on our phones. Diablo Immortal was expected to be ready to release sometime this year, but Blizzard announced today that's not happening.

Diablo Immortal "is now planned for release in the first half of 2022, which will allow us to add substantial improvements to the whole game," Blizzard wrote in a press release.

According to the announcement, the delay will allow Blizzard to incorporate feedback from technical alpha players to make PvP content like the Cycle of Strife "more accessible" and PvE content like the Helliquary "more engaging." Immortal is also getting controller support. "These changes will be implemented in the future, as we plan for our next beta testing milestone," Blizzard says.

Here are some of the changes to expect in Diablo Immortal when it's finally done cooking:

The Helliquary system now has PvE raids for up to 8 players
Bounties are being tweaked to be "more engaging and fruitful": "For example, whenever you accept 4 bounties they will all be for the same zone"
Challenge Rifts will reward exclusive upgrade materials to make them more worthwhile
The PvP Battleground sounds like it could get a big overhaul as Blizzard evaluates "matchmaking, earning rankings, class balance, time to kill, and other defining elements"
Players with higher Paragon levels (gained after hitting level cap) will be able to earn more powerful items on higher difficulties
Blizzard is adding bonus XP gain for players who play less often and replacing its weekly XP cap with "a global cap that increases over time"

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).