Will GTA 6 really launch before we get a single word on Diablo himself?
No Diablo in Diablo 4 in three years, and now GTA 6 is the stick fans are poking Blizzard with.
Three years after launch, the demon whose name is literally the title of the game has still not properly appeared in Diablo 4. GTA 6, meanwhile, launches on November 19. Of course, the Diablo community has noticed, and it has found a very good way of putting it.
Will we really get GTA 6 before we get Diablo in Diablo 4, or any news regarding the Prime Evil at all?
For years, the internet has joked about everything we somehow got before GTA 6. Now that Rockstar's game is just a little over two months away, Diablo 4 players have started to turn the meme around.
Grand Theft Soulstone Is Hard to Beat
The forum thread that inspired this piece starts with a very short observation and then gets progressively sillier from there.
Player comments range from imagining Diablo relaxing on a beach with every physical copy of GTA 6 to jokes about him being killed off in the three previous games, so the Prime Evil had simply decided to skip this one (Diablo 4).
Somewhere in the middle, between all the fun and banter, someone suggested a crossover called Grand Theft Diablo, which was quickly improved to "Grand Theft Soulstone." Hard to argue with that one, because a Soulstone is more or less how Diablo gets around, after all.
What we found particularly entertaining, though, is a message within the thread that mentions how video game titles have never been particularly literal. The comment came from Iggi, who is a very active user within the Diablo forums. They stated that you play as Link in The Legend of Zelda. StarCraft does not let you craft stars, and Final Fantasy has survived long enough to make the name increasingly questionable, as nothing is truly "final".
This was followed by a joke from a player who pretended they had only just learned that the hero of Diablo is not Diablo himself. Next, they added, we will be told that "the little girl with the pointy hat isn't Zelda." The audacity!
Diablo Is Probably Being Saved for Much Later
As fun as it is to joke about GTA 6 releasing before we even see Diablo in our Diablo game, there is a reasonable explanation behind all of this. Diablo 4 began with Lilith, then spent its two following expansions building out Mephisto's story. Lord of Hatred gave the Prime Evil an entire campaign instead of rushing straight to Diablo.
The common theory is that Blizzard is saving Diablo for much later. He could become the final Prime Evil we fight in Diablo 4, perhaps in a future expansion, or Blizzard could hold him back even longer for Diablo 5. None of those possibilities have been confirmed. Currently, even the rumors point elsewhere, with Maltahel being the next big name most people expect for Season 15.
Diablo 5 is likely a long way off, and it would be strange for Diablo 4 to end without ever letting us fight Diablo himself. That makes an expansion the safer bet. It could be the next one or the one after that, assuming Blizzard still has multiple expansions planned. Either Diablo or Baal would be a natural choice to follow Mephisto and receive an expansion of his own.
And we might not have to wait long to find out! BlizzCon 2026 is next weekend, on September 12 and 13, and Diablo could at least show up there in a teaser. That would spoil the joke a little, although a reveal is still very different from fighting him in the game.
Either way, GTA 6 has not beaten Diablo to Diablo 4 just yet. But November 19 (GTA 6's release date) is getting close, and the Prime Evil is still nowhere to be found...
Grand Theft Soulstone, indeed.