Blizzard

How many copies did Diablo sell? — 2024 statistics

Summoning insights from the dark corners of Sanctuary.

Fact-checked
First Released
January 3, 1997
Genre
Action role-playing
Developer
Blizzard
Publisher
Blizzard

Diablo, standing tall in gaming history, is all about epic realm wars and impending doom. You jump in, pick a character class – maybe a wizard, a rogue, or a barbarian – and get a variety of gameplay experiences. But beyond the battles, it’s the massive fanbase, hooked on the narrative and gameplay, that defines this franchise. Now, the big question is, how many copies did Diablo sell? That’s a number that showcases the real impact of this iconic series. If you’re a fan of these sorts of things, we recommend taking a look at some video game industry statistics and facts as well.

Diablo sales stats

The best way to create a perspective of this series and gauge how massive it actually is, we are going to start by taking a look at its sales and total revenue across all of its titles. Diablo games are usually very popular with a broad audience of gamers and the sales have really accumulated over the years. Let’s take a look.

The Diablo series has sold over 82.5 million copies worldwide.

(Sources: VG Sales, VG Chartz)

  • The top-selling game of the franchise is Diablo III along with its expansion, Reaper of Souls, with over 65 million copies sold.
  • The second-highest seller was Diablo II with 16 million copies sold.
  • Other Blizzard series have accumulated 39.1 million sales, which is still lower than the Diablo series.
  • Diablo Immortal had the most successful launch in franchise history, with over 10 million downloads within the first week.
  • The only game that is comparable in sales to the Diablo series is Overwatch, with over 50 million sales.

As we can see through these stats, the Diablo series has always been subject to popularity and hype, amassing millions of sales in 2012 alone. You can’t have a series with this many sales without a justified reason, and through this, we can clearly tell that the Diablo series was a home run!

Diablo IV generated $666 million in revenue within the first five days after launch.

(Source: Forbes)

  • Diablo IV’s release drove a 160% year-over-year revenue increase for Activision Blizzard.

Diablo IV has been a massive commercial success for Activision Blizzard, becoming the best-selling game in June and the third best-selling game of the year. The game’s launch drove a 160% year-over-year revenue increase for the company, and it reached the impressive milestone of $666 million in global sales within just 5 days, making it Blizzard’s fastest-selling title ever. These strong sales figures demonstrate the continued popularity of the Diablo franchise and the high demand for the latest installment.

Diablo Immortal revenue was highest of any Diablo game at the time, reaching over $100 million within two months of release.

(Source: Game World Observer)

  • The game had over 10 million downloads within the first week.
  • The United States has the highest percentage of downloads of the game at 45%, followed by South Korea at 21% and Japan at 8%.

When the game was just announced, it was met with some controversy for being marketed as a mobile game, sparking the “Don’t you guys have phones?” meme, as well as general ridicule of Blizzard for suggesting that hardcore PC gamers should switch over to mobile gaming. Nevertheless, Diablo Immortal still proved to be a popular release, accumulating massive download numbers and revenue for the company.

It costs $110,000 to max out a character in Diablo Immortal.

(Source: The Gamer)

  • The game has the lowest user score on Metacritic at 0.2/10, largely due to the presence of microtransactions.
  • The iOS version of the game also has a Metacritic user score of 0.5/10 for the same reason.
  • Microtransactions earned Diablo Immortal over $24 million in the first two weeks of launch.

As you can see, the controversy surrounding Diablo Immortal doesn’t end with the game being primarily mobile. A very large portion of the Diablo community was outraged at the fact that the game had microtransactions to being with, let alone the fact that maximum out a single character can cost so much.

Diablo user stats

Moving on, we are now going to check out some of the user stats regarding all of the games in the series. The Diablo franchise has seen a tremendous number of players over the years, so you can be sure that there is a lot of information here!

Players killed 3.3 trillion monsters in the first year of Diablo III’s release.

(Source: Blizzard)

  • In the first year of the game’s release, Diablo players killed over 3.3 trillion monsters.
  • That is approximately 31 monsters for every human that has ever lived.
  • The average number of monsters killed per created character is 49,595.
  • The total number of players that have killed Diablo is 22.5 million.
  • Based on clicks, players have burned over 4.7 billion calories while playing.

The most common thing people do in Diablo III is killing monsters, it is a key aspect of the game and it is no wonder that the numbers look like this. 3,3 trillion monsters killed is an astronomical number of clicks and you can see here just how fun the gameplay of Diablo III was, and still is.

The highest number of players Diablo III had in one day was 5.8 million.

(Source: Blizzard)

  • Within the first year of the game’s release, the peak player count for one day was 5,8 million.
  • The average number of daily players in 2013 was 2.1 million.
  • The average number of hours played per day in 2013 was 8.2 million.
  • The total number of hours played in 2013 was 2.8 billion.
  • As of 2022, the Diablo III player count is usually between 15,000 and 30,000.

Another interesting stat section, we can see that the popularity of this game was growing exponentially within the first year of release. Of course, the initial hype of the game has died down over the years, with the 2022 player count a shadow of its former self.

Players created over 67.1 million characters in the first year of the game’s release.

(Source: Blizzard)

  • In total, the community created over 67.1 million characters in Diablo III in 2013.
  • The highest number of those was designated to the Demon Hunter class at 13.5 million.
  • The average number of characters per player was 4.63.
  • The average number of characters created per day was 183,962.
  • 33% of the total characters created were in the United States.
  • 33% of the total characters created were in Europe.
  • 34% of the total characters created were in Asia.
  • The total number of level 60 characters was 12.7 million.

A major reason Diablo III, as well as the Diablo franchise itself, is so popular is the replayability of the game and the fact that you can make a lot of different characters across different playthroughs.

Diablo Immortal players created over 14.2 million characters within the first two weeks of launch.

(Source: Wowhead)

  • Within the first two weeks of its release, Diablo Immortal players created over 14 million characters.
  • With those characters, 35.5 million dungeons and 42.4 million Elder Rifts were completed.
  • Players had killed over 2.7 billion demons in the first two weeks of the game’s release.
  • In the same time frame, players died 126 million times.

Despite the onslaught of controversy and poor reviews, the gameplay of Diablo Immortal without the microtransactions is still the same as in previous games and players can get quite immersed in killing demons and running dungeons.

Players have spent over 7 billion hours in Diablo II and III combined.

(Source: GamePur)

  • This number equates to 844K years of playtime.

2,9 billion hours logged into Diablo III across one year of release is a very good number, but it pales in comparison to how many hours two of the games in the series have, which is staggering.

Diablo Twitch stats

Every single Diablo released so far has sparked massive hype around streaming and broadcasting the game to other people who either don’t have it or just want to enjoy watching the gameplay with some nice commentary.

The Diablo franchise has accumulated over 28.5 million hours watched in 2022.

(Source: SullyGnome)

  • The game with the most hours watched is Diablo Immortal with 13.3 million hours logged.
  • The game with the second highest number of broadcast hours is Diablo III with 12.4 million hours logged.
  • The other two games, combined, have raked in only 2.8 million hours watched.

Something interesting about these numbers is the disparity between Diablo I and II compared to the next two games in the series. This suggests that the general appeal of the latter two games is correlated with higher quality, thus leading to more broadcasting hours.

Of all the games in the franchise, Diablo Immortal had the highest peak viewer count of 241,991.

(Source: SullyGnome)

  • The average peak viewer count of the entire series is 68,504.
  • The game with the highest peak viewer count in the last 365 days is 241,991. This was on June 2nd, the day of its release.
  • The peak viewer count for the game dropped to 74,882 the very next day.
  • The lowest peak viewer count belongs to Diablo I with 6,574.

As with the last section of information, launch hype is another important aspect of the peak viewer count as well. We can see here that the highest peak viewer count for Diablo Immortal was on the same day as its release, but it quickly dropped the next day, likely due to controversial opinions taking away a portion of the fanbase.

The average number of viewers for Diablo Immortal in the last 365 days was 1,518.

(Source: SullyGnome)

  • The average number of viewers across the entirety of Twitch in the last year was 814.
  • The highest number of average viewers belongs to Diablo Immortal was 1,518.
  • The lowest number of average viewers belongs to Diablo with only 24.

Across the last year, we can see that the average viewer count for the Diablo series has decreased considerably, but that is to be expected since Twitch is a site saturated with content creators that like to play the game either due to nostalgia or to replay the older games before the release of Diablo IV. Either way, the current average viewer rate is respectable for the series and we’re expecting things to improve the closer we get to Diablo IV.

To sum up

The Diablo series is definitely one of the most impactful and most popular video game franchises in the world, amassing millions of fans around the world while simultaneously depriving all of them of sleep. The gameplay is fantastic and immersive, fulfilling all of the needs people have when it comes to action RPGs and dungeon crawlers, and we are sure that Diablo IV is going to take a lesson from the embarrassment that was Diablo Immortal and adjust the gameplay and internal mechanics accordingly. The franchise has gained numerous accolades over the years so it is more than worth playing through if you’re looking to try out the newest addition to the series. We sincerely hope that you have learned something new from the information we have provided and that all of your questions have been answered.

Sources

  • “Best selling Blizzard games”. VG Sales, 2022, https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Best_selling_Blizzard_games
  • “Do You Guys Not Have Phones?”. Know Your Meme, 2018, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-you-guys-not-have-phones
  • “Diablo Immortal generates $14.5 million on mobile in 1 week, Blizzard calls it “biggest launch in franchise history”. Game World Observer, 2022, https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/06/10/diablo-immortal-generates-14-5-million-on-mobile-in-1-week-blizzard-calls-it-biggest-launch-in-franchise-history
  • “Diablo Immortal becomes lowest-rated Blizzard game by players, while its revenue tops $6 million”. Game Observer World, 2022, https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/06/06/diablo-immortal-becomes-lowest-rated-blizzard-game-by-players-while-its-revenue-tops-6-million
  • “Diablo 3 Live Player Count – How Many People Are Playing Now?”. PlayerCounter, 2022, https://playercounter.com/diablo-3/
  • “Activision Blizzard’s ‘Diablo IV’ Was June’s Best-Selling Video Game—And Is Already The Third Best-Seller Of The Year”. Forbes, 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/08/02/activision-blizzards-diablo-iv-was-junes-best-selling-video-game-and-is-already-the-third-best-seller-of-the-year/?sh=4f93cd44c400
  • “It Costs Over $100,000 To Fully Upgrade Your Character In Diablo Immortal”. TheGamer, 2022, https://www.thegamer.com/it-costs-over-100000-to-fully-upgrade-your-character-in-diablo-immortal/
  • “Diablo Immortal Post Launch Infographic and $24 Million in Revenue”. Wowhead, 2022, https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-immortal/news/diablo-immortal-post-launch-infographic-and-24-million-in-revenue-327413
  • “Diablo Immortal generates $100m in lifetime revenue”. GamesIndustry, 2022, https://www.gamesindustry.biz/diablo-immortal-generates-100m-in-lifetime-revenue
  • “Diablo III: 1 Year Infographic”. Blizzard, 2013, https://us.diablo3.blizzard.com/en-us/game/anniversary-infographic/
  • “Diablo III Tops 65 Million Players – News”. VG Chartz, 2022, https://www.vgchartz.com/article/453645/diablo-iii-tops-65-million-players/
  • “Players have logged over 7 billion hours on Diablo 2: Resurrected and Diablo 3 combined”. GamePur, 2022, https://www.gamepur.com/news/players-have-logged-over-7-billion-hours-on-diablo-2-resurrected-and-diablo-3-combined
  • “Diablo Immortal”. SullyGnome, 2022, https://sullygnome.com/game/Diablo_Immortal/365/summary
  • “Diablo”. SullyGnome, 2022, https://sullygnome.com/game/Diablo/365
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