Imagine calling out a competing game and stirring up its community enough that the big boss itself has to take time out of their day to reply.

This is exactly what happened when Blizzard Entertainment President, Mike Ybarra, responded after Diablo 4 was called out for being "lazy."

The reply comes no more than 24 hours after Chad Jessup, a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer over at Bungie, used the words "lazy" and "just sucks" to describe the enemy scaling in Diablo 4.

Blizzard Entertainment's latest in the Diablo series, Diablo 4, continues to make waves in the gaming community, having set a record for the best-selling opening period in the company's history. Despite the solid beginning, it hasn't been all smooth sailing. The game has attracted criticism from a surprising source: a developer from Bungie, the studio behind the gold standard in the live-service genre, Destiny.

In a now-deleted tweet, the Destiny 2 developer took issue with Diablo 4's enemy scaling system, describing it as "lazy" and "one of the worst ideas in video games."

The tweet was met with a largely negative reaction from Diablo fans, some of whom fired back by arguing they were more engaged with Diablo 4's progression than Destiny 2's recent updates.

Among the critics of the tweet was Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who responded with a succinct, bemused reply to the "lazy" description. However, the controversy didn't stop Diablo 4 from receiving largely positive feedback from the broader gaming community. Despite the criticism from the Destiny 2 developer, many fans continue to enjoy the action-packed role-playing game.

The criticism came in the context of shared elements between the two games, including multiplayer features and leveling aspects. Before Diablo 4's launch, Destiny 2 fans had even suggested features that would translate well to the isometric action-RPG title. In fact, some gameplay nuances would benefit both games, and fans hoped the developers would take inspiration from each other.

However, the negative comments from the Bungie employee seem to have backfired, as many gamers pointed out areas where Diablo 4 excels compared to Destiny 2.

Diablo 4's features like the presence of world bosses and the game's transmogrification features were cited as areas where Destiny 2 could take a page from Diablo 4's book - not the other way around.

Blizzard's game also outperforms Destiny 2 when it comes to player incentives. Some players felt that Bungie's game lacked sufficient rewards to encourage players to engage in activities like raids. In contrast, Diablo 4 players have praised it for its unique challenges and top-tier loot offered by its world bosses, making it a more rewarding experience.

Despite the comparison and contrasting opinions, both Diablo 4 and Destiny 2 continue to hold a strong presence in the gaming industry. However, this recent discourse reveals that game design is a complicated art, and even successful games can attract criticism. Blizzard and Bungie will undoubtedly continue to innovate and adapt their games in response to fan feedback and ongoing developments in the gaming industry.

It's worth noting, though, that there are always lessons to be learned. Bungie's team, for instance, could learn a lot from the approach taken by Blizzard to creating engaging gameplay experiences in Diablo 4. Introducing world bosses to Destiny 2, similar to Diablo 4, would be a major step forward for the game, offering players unique challenges and top-tier loot.

Of course, we can't deny that Bungie is currently one of the benchmarks in gaming when it comes to live-service titles. It goes so far that some AAA developers invite Bungie to assess/rate their live-service projects and it's one of the reasons why Sony bought the studio in the first place. In fact, Sony is already putting Bungie's expertise to good use, with the studio's input resulting in Naughty Dog "delaying" its upcoming multiplayer spin-off to The Last of Us.