Blizzard's upcoming game, Diablo 4, has been making headlines recently, but unfortunately not for the reasons the company had hoped. Several reports have emerged claiming that the game's early access beta has been bricking graphics cards, specifically the RTX 3080 Ti.
Many users have taken to forums to complain about their expensive GPUs being fried while playing the game, with most of the affected models being from Gigabyte. In one Reddit post, a user reported that their Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Vision OC 12G died during a cutscene in the chapel after only 20 minutes of playtime. Another user reported the same model of card being bricked during the same cutscene.
Similar reports have also surfaced on Blizzard's own forums, with some users claiming their RTX 3080 Ti burned out after only a few minutes of gameplay, and others saying their fans maxed out and their monitors went off on multiple occasions, killing their graphics card.
One player who submitted a ticket to Blizzard received a reply directing them to the company's Terms of Service, which states that Blizzard is not liable for any damage caused to a machine while running a game in beta.
Interestingly, it's not just the RTX 3080 Ti that has been affected. Reports have also emerged of the game destroying RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards.
This is not the first time that a beta has been blamed for damaging hardware. Amazon's New World beta last year bricked several EVGA RTX 3090 cards, which was initially attributed to the game's lack of a frame rate limiter, but later found to be due to poor soldering around the MOSFET circuits.
As for whether the Diablo 4 incidents are due to a similar hardware fault, it is currently unclear. The open beta for the game began on March 24 and run until March 26. In the meantime, affected users are left with expensive paperweights and the hope that the issue is resolved before the game's official release.
