It looks like Diablo IV may be the second major PC game to support DirectStorage

It looks like Diablo IV’s beta supports Microsoft’s DirectStorage API, accelerating loading times

Thanks to the datamining efforts of Reddit’s Diablo fans, we now know that Blizzard’s Diablo IV beta appears to support Microsoft’s DirectStorage API, a factor that may make Diablo IV the second major AAA game to launch with Microsoft’s storage boosting technology. 

Within Diablo IV’s beta are two files called dstorage.dll and dstoragecore.dll, files that suggest that DirectStorage has been implemented into the game on PC. Currently, the game appears to support DirectStorage 1.0 (1.02 to be exact), which means that the game appears to lack support for GPU accelerated decompression, a feature which was added with DirectStorage 1.1.

Using DirectStorage 1.0, Microsoft’s DirectStorage API is designed to reduce the CPU overhead of storage related tasks and accelerate loading times for games. Currently, Forspoken is the only AAA game that makes use of this API, though the API is likely to see broader adoption over the next few years, especially as games start to make use of the storage potential of modern NVMe SSDs. 

With Diablo IV, Blizzard is keeping up with the latest technologies that PC gamers have access to, with the game supporting DLSS 2 in its current beta state with Blizzard planning to support DLSS 3 with the game’s day-1 version. Blizzard has also confirmed that ray tracing is coming to Diablo IV, but that the feature will become available though a post-launch patch.

You can join the discussion on Diablo IV’s DirectStorage support on the OC3D Forums.