Diablo 3 might never beat Diablo 2's popularity, with the remaster overtaking the sequel's player count

Diablo 3 is significantly less popular than Diablo 2, according to Rod Fergusson, Diablo’s General Manager. At the recent 2025 DICE Summit, Game File Founder and reporter Steven Totilo spoke to Fergusson about a variety of topics, but perhaps the most interesting thing is the data he has access to — and it shows that D2 is still in a very good state, when it comes to a playerbase.

Rod Fergusson talked about his dashboard, which features information about the daily active playerbase of all the main Blizzard games. We have been able to infer in the past that Diablo 3 is less popular than Diablo 2, but having proof, data from Blizzard is incredibly rare, so it’s worth talking about.

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Diablo 2 is still incredibly popular, easily eclipsing Diablo 3, according to Blizzard’s data

Rod Fergusson has access to all the Diablo data — for Diablo 2 Resurrected, Diablo 3, Diablo 4, and even Immortal. He can see when players are surging towards a game; typically, when D4’s new seasons drop, players come rushing back to the game. However, Fergusson’s data is from the day before, and it’s not live player counts. That doesn’t change how fascinating the information is, though.

I had my fun with Diablo 3, but when D4 dropped, I completely dropped it (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

According to the General Manager of the Diablo franchise, Diablo 2 Resurrected is doing quite well, even better than D3 is. He stated as such during his interview with Steven Totilo, saying:

“We have more Diablo II Resurrected players than Diablo III right now.”

The game developer felt that the majority of D3 players moved on to the next hot game, which was Diablo 4. This is likely due to all of the new content, such as the game’s various seasons, and fresh, new content and loot. Those players likely enjoyed doing millions and billions of damage, and you can certainly do that in Diablo 4.

Diablo 2 has always been a popular game — it might be the most popular game in the whole franchise. Players have been able to consistently play the original version for years, whether on older PCs or through Battle.net. All of that changed when Diablo 2 Resurrected dropped, though. Suddenly, the game was easier to access than ever before.

Just look at that clean UI! The smooth visuals! I never mind coming back to D2R (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

You could play it with some updated visuals, quality-of-life changes, controller support, and you could play online with your friends. It’s not perfect, though. The choice to remove LAN support from D2R was met with some pretty intense anger from the community, after all.

While Rod Fergusson didn’t give any detailed numbers that I saw, it’s fascinating to hear that D3 simply cannot compete with the remake of a classic game like Diablo 2. It really just shows you what kind of impact that game had on the genre, compared to what D3 did.

Sure, Diablo 3 was a fun game to play, and I have fond memories of it. But nothing compared to the many hours I grinded away at D2, struggling to get the perfect runes and equipment alongside my friends.

With Diablo 3 now just repeating seasons and giving up on “new” content, D2R really doesn’t need to do anything to remain more popular. It just has to exist, and people will come back to it. There are still so many ways to play and enjoy that classic ARPG — for example, going with a passive run in D2R.

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Check out our other Diablo guides and features:

• Is Diablo 4 Season 8’s Torment 4 too difficult for casual players?
• Is Diablo 3 worth trying on the Switch?
• A brief guide to Diablo II: Resurrected for new players of the franchise