Blizzard Accused of Malicious Design as Diablo 4 Players Accidentally Activate Premium Battle Pass

In yet more Diablo 4 live service drama, developer Blizzard has been accused of "malicious design" by fans for the apparent shocking ease with which the game parts players from their hard-earned money, whether they intended it or not.

Streamer Rurikhan took to Twitter (or X, if you prefer) to share an example, which is pretty damning in its own right. When bringing up the Season tab (to check Season of the Malignant progress, perhaps), the default cursor selection is always on the "Activate Premium Pass" button, and there is no confirmation warning, meaning that careless players (or those coming off of a 12-hour grind session) could easily find themselves out of pocket. Strong language warning!

Streamer Rhykker stopped by the thread to school us all, teaching us the term "dark pattern", which is when a UI element is designed to trick you into clicking on it. To our eye, Diablo 4's current situation fits that definition, but the good news is that a fix is on the way.

In a reply to Rhykker, Diablo 4 community lead Adam Fletcher said: "Just had a powwow with people on this post stream. We have a temp fix in the works that will at least ensure the cursor isn’t defaulted there and will instead be defaulted on Season Journey."

It hasn't been deployed at the time of this writing, and Push Square was able to fearlessly verify Rurikhan's account in a stunning piece of investigative journalism (accomplished before coffee was even ingested). Indeed, no confirmation or warning is given before payment is processed (but we do actually kind of need those XP buffs).