Looking for your Christmas holiday game? Diablo 4 is now free to play
A lengthy trial is available on PC, Xbox and PlayStation, no payment required
Back in 2023 some folks spent almost £100 just to play Diablo 4 a bit early. You can now try it out for free, until January.
Diablo 4 is free to play on PC, Xbox and PlayStation consoles until January 3. Playing on PC? You’ll have to access the game through battle.net rather than Steam.
But what is Diablo 4? It’s quite a different game based on whether you are a new player, or someone who has already plunged dozens of hours into it.
On the surface Diablo 4 is an isometric action roleplaying title. You can treat it like a single-player experience, although you do need an internet connection to play it.
If you want to just see what the game has to offer, you can fight your way through the main quest in around 20 hours — or longer if you stray from the story activities more.
This trial includes the content from the game’s recent expansion Vessel of Hatred. It introduced a new class, Spiritborn, which uses a combo of melee weapons and nature-inspired magic.
So, yeah, if you dipped your toes into Diablo 4 but fell off, it’s a good time to try it out again.
Why such a generous freebie when the game should still be coasting off the interest bump of a big expansion pack?
It’s simple: Path of Exile 2. The original Path of Exile came out in 2013, and was heavily inspired by Diablo.
Path of Exile 2 just came out, on December 8, and has likely nicked a huge number of Diablo 4 players.
More than 400,000 people are playing at the same time on Steam each day according to SteamDB. Meanwhile, around 12,000 are on Diablo 4 — although this isn’t really a fair comparison given many Diablo players don’t use Steam.
There are a few key limitations to this Diablo 4 trial. You can only reach level 25, and progress to a late stage in Act 1 of the campaign. It won’t let you finish the full game, but as freebies go it’s a pretty solid one.
