WTF?! Love it or hate it, Blizzard is notorious for its marketing campaigns when it comes to promoting AAA titles. The Diablo and Modern Warfare publisher has employed every tactic imaginable, from building-sized ads in New York and Las Vegas to secret phone messages leaking game reveals and intel. Never one to be outdone, the company’s latest campaign promoting Diablo 4 Season 2 has once again upped the ante, offering participating players a chance to win a blood-infused PC of their own.
This week Blizzard released news of its latest promotion for Diablo 4’s Season 2 Blood Harvest. During the promotional period, participating players can earn in game items and the chance to win a high-end custom PC infused with real human blood. You read that right. Diablo 4 fans can enter to win a PC infused with real human blood.
While it sounds like pure marketing horror, the campaign is actually designed with the best of intentions and as a play on the current season’s crimson theme.
The promotion features Blizzard’s real-life blood harvest, a blood donation drive to help donation centers “harvest” 666 quarts of life-saving blood between October 20 and November 20. During the promotional period, U.S.-based players can participate by donating blood at any qualified donation center and logging their contribution via the Blood Harvest website.
Give blood 𩸠unlock loot �”ï¸Â
Donate blood at your local clinic to help unlock
in-game rewards for all #DiabloIV players.https://t.co/YfNO0kkQKr pic.twitter.com/15f3ducDCl– Diablo (@Diablo) October 20, 2023
According to the promotion, Blizzard will unlock Crimson-coated weapons, armor, and mount cosmetics after hitting 33%, 66%, and 100% of its donation goals. The promotion will also celebrate reaching 100% of its goal by giving away a decked out custom PC infused with human blood.
In addition to the blood, the PC will include a GeForce RTX 4090 on an EK Quantum Vector waterblock, Intel Core i9 CPU, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, and plenty of storage. The post notes that the PC giveaway will be open to any entrants over the age of 18 and not only those that donated blood during the promotional period.
Announced in early October, Diablo 4’s Season of Blood adds a new vampiric mechanic to this season’s gameplay. The new mechanic allows players to unlock and leverage more than 20 different vampiric powers designed to further strengthen their characters.
In true Blizzard fashion, the new seasonal update was released complete with a broken objective and reward system, bugs that inadvertently disabled crossplay capabilities, and a broken battle pass system that left players unable to claim rewards.
Fortunately for everyone involved, Blizzard has been able to quickly address these and other issues, reversing its course and potentially avoiding a rollout similar to its disastrous Season 1 release.