At my old neighborhood rental shop, the Diablo box sat behind the counter, and all we could do was look. It was a PC game, for people with a good computer at home. The lucky ones got the demo CD from a magazine and spent whole afternoons going down the stairs of the Tristram cathedral. That demo is still alive, and today it runs in the browser.
The Diablo demo in the browser
The diabloweb project, created in 2019 by the programmer known as Riv, compiled the 1996 Diablo to WebAssembly. The project’s official page ships with the shareware file, the demo Blizzard handed out for free in 1997. It unlocks the start of the adventure, and it runs even on phones. For the full game, the project asks you to use your own DIABDAT.MPQ, the data file that comes with an original copy.
How to play the full Diablo legally
Blizzard has sold Diablo with the Hellfire expansion on GOG since 2019, DRM-free. With that copy in hand, there are two paths. The first is loading your DIABDAT.MPQ into diabloweb. The second, which I recommend for PC players, is DevilutionX, which runs Diablo on modern systems at high resolution with many fixes. Version 1.5.5 came out on October 30, 2025.
One important detail
The code behind these projects grew out of Devilution, a community reconstruction, and it is not an official Blizzard release. The game data still belongs to Blizzard. So here at SavePoint the rule is simple: the free demo or a copy you bought, never files grabbed from some random site.
Want other classics you can play honestly? Check our guide to games ported to the browser and PC, read the tips on using your own files without losing your save and visit the Preservation section.
Where to buy: Gaming mice on Amazon
Source: Blizzard Entertainment, GOG, diabloweb and DevilutionX.
