Diablo 4 goes free-to-play for a limited time in January 2025

Blizzard Entertainment is opening the gates to hell free of charge – but only for a limited time. On PC, Diablo 4 will be free-to-play until January 28, 2025, via Battle.net giving players a chance to try out the new Spiritborn class from the hack ‘n slay RPG’s latest expansion. 

Anyone liking what they’re experiencing can pick up the game at a discounted price during this window of time.

Diablo 4 was released in 2023 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S with Vessel of Hatred, its first expansion, following in 2024. It’s playable via Xbox Game Pass as well, becoming the most-recently released Blizzard title to join the library of the subscription service.

Becoming the fastest-selling game in Blizzard’s storied history, Diablo 4 reached twelve million players about two months after launching.

However, the competition in this genre is tough, especially now that Path of Exile 2 is finally out in Early Access. Comparing the performance of both games on Steam shows that Diablo 4 hovers around a peak of 5,000 concurrent players daily on the platform, though this number tripled with the release of the Season of Witchcraft. Path of Exile 2, on the other hand, clocks in at around 225,000 concurrent users at its daily peak at the moment, dwarfing Diablo 4’s metrics.

Naturally, there are significant differences in pricing, platforms, and release dates between both games, but with Diablo 4 being a live-service Blizzard hopes to monetize for a long time, those numbers do matter at the end of the day – and if they force Blizzard to be a little generous from time to time, that’s all the better for players.