Diablo Creator David Brevik Names the Game With Gaming's Worst Ending

The Creator of Diablo Has Strong Opinions About Endings

David Brevik has spent decades thinking about what makes action RPGs tick. As the creator of the original Diablo, he helped define an entire genre, so when he weighs in on what works and what does not in game design, people tend to listen. His latest opinion is a pointed one: according to PC Gamer, Brevik has identified a specific game as having the worst ending he has ever experienced as a player.

He did not exactly bury the lede with his criticism. Brevik reportedly called it the worst ending to any game he has played, full stop. That is a strong claim from someone who has been in and around the games industry since the early 1990s and has presumably cleared more titles than most.

Love the Game, Hate the Ending

What makes Brevik’s take interesting is the tension embedded in it. He was not dismissing the game entirely. Far from it. As reported by PC Gamer, Brevik followed up his criticism by saying he really loves the game and considers it amazing. That combination, a genuine affection for an experience paired with real frustration at how it closes out, is something a lot of players will recognize immediately.

It is a specific kind of disappointment, the kind that comes from a game earning your trust for dozens of hours and then stumbling at the finish line. Bad endings on bad games are easy to shrug off. Bad endings on great games have a way of sticking with you.

For Brevik, whose own work in Diablo was defined by a memorable and deliberately bleak conclusion, endings clearly carry weight. The original Diablo’s closing moment, where the hero drives the soulstone into their own skull in an attempt to contain the Lord of Terror, remains one of the more striking endings in the genre’s history. It sets up a tragedy and follows through on it. That kind of intentionality in a finale is not something Brevik appears willing to let slide when it goes wrong elsewhere.

Why This Kind of Criticism Matters

Brevik’s willingness to call out a specific game by name, even while praising it, reflects something genuine about how serious players and developers engage with the medium. Endings are hard to get right. They have to pay off the mechanical loop players have been living in, resolve narrative threads, and send people away feeling something earned. Miss any of those marks and even a beloved game can leave a sour taste.

For developers, hearing that kind of critique from someone with Brevik’s pedigree lands differently than a complaint from an anonymous forum post. He has shipped games. He knows what goes into building toward a conclusion. When he says an ending is the worst he has encountered, that is not a casual swipe.

For players, there is also something reassuring about a figure like Brevik engaging honestly with games outside his own work. It is a reminder that the people who build these experiences are also spending their off hours playing them, forming opinions, getting invested, and yes, occasionally getting let down by the final cutscene just like everyone else.

The specific game Brevik named, as identified by PC Gamer, puts a concrete face on a debate that tends to stay abstract. Endings shape how we remember an entire experience, and Brevik, for one, clearly has not forgotten this one.