The Schaefer brothers and D2R Items created the first Diablo in their own studio, Condor however, which Blizzard bought just prior to the release of the original Diablo at the time of its release in. Erich Schaefer told me that the buyout could not have happened at a better time because Condor was in financial crisis. He noted that the studio was just scraping by but didn't have enough cash to cover some of its taxes.

"We did not pay our payroll taxes. They are the taxes we take from the wages of our employees. They're required to send tax receipts to governments. We've never sent it directly to government officials," Erich Schaefer told the AP. "We were almost out of money. We came in one morning and are given a message on our calendar that reads "Three days to pay or else you'll be sent to go to jail.' It was really rough. It was really frightening. We came up with a little money [to pay the taxes] and luckily the deal that turned us into Blizzard was just the perfect time to save our lives."

The panel also revealed that Max Schaefer revealed that Condor was a signer to create the original Diablo in the amount of $300.000. The amount was "woefully not enough." The studio, he said, at the time which was "always totally out of cash," which was very difficult. The financial security that an acquisition by Blizzard could provide was appealing for the team. The team eventually would later develop Diablo in addition.

The first Diablo outdid all expectations. The Schaefer brothers had their sights set on that the title would sell 20.000 copies and that was enough to make a sequel. The cheap diablo 2 resurrected items game of course sold many more than that, and helped define the ARPG genre that is extremely popular in the present.