Diablo 2 Development Involved 'Brutal 18 Month Crunch' Where Employees Were Given Sleeping Bags

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With Diablo 2: Resurrected's September release date looming ever closer, some gamers may wish to turn their attention to the original 2000 Diablo 2. Diablo 2 is still considered a classic game and a wide audience continues to play it religiously over 20 years after its release. However, this legendary game came at a very high cost for its developers, who sacrificed a lot to bring their vision to life.

According to David L. Craddock, author of over a dozen books about video games - including Stay Awhile and Listen: Book II, which focuses on the making of Diablo 2 - the game was a massive undertaking. About 10 chapters of the book are dedicated to Diablo 2's development, particularly its timeline, which involved a brutal 18-month crunch period.

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Reportedly, the exhausting process lasted for so long that employees were given sleeping bags and provided meals so that they never had to leave the office. While this may appear to be a good way to save time, working round the clock took a heavy toll on the developers. David Brevik, co-founder and then president of Blizzard North, was hit especially hard. Craddock states that Brevik described himself as a "seagull manager" and claimed that he had checked out mentally by the time Diablo 2 was approaching completion, spending a lot of his time playing Everquest to escape the pressure of the project and his failing marriage.

Craddock also states that while the original release of Diablo 2 was great, the game's one and only expansion, Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, was considered the high point by everyone who worked on the game. During the year after Diablo 2 launched, when most of the studio was burned out and drifting, the Lord of Destruction team were apparently living the game developer's dream. They had a successful product and all the support the product needed had already been positioned, leaving them free to focus on simply creating. The result spoke for itself in 2001 and continues to speak for itself today.

Additionally, Craddock noted that the cinematics of Diablo 2 were created separately from the gameplay, allowing players to skip all the cutscenes without missing a beat. This is a choice that added inherent replayability to the game since there was no need to brush up on the story. Diablo 3 did not continue this separation of cinematic and gameplay, which Craddock believes was a mistake Blizzard North would never have made. Regardless, the story shines a spotlight on just how brutal crunch time can be in the video game industry.

Diablo 2: Resurrected releases September 23 on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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