Unsettled by the brighter color palette of Blizzard’s Diablo III (PC), fans took to the internet with online petitions and doctored screenshots, attempting to show the developer the error of its ways.

But Diablo III designer Jay Wilson believes that those fans may not grasp the capabilities and limitations of the hack-and-slash sequel’s engine.

"The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn’t created by the engine," Wilson told MTV Multiplayer, when asked of the screenshots pictured above.

"Though it looks really cool, it’s almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can’t have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable," he added. "If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons."

Wilson further explained that color desaturation prominently featured in several other fan-altered shots reduce the visibility of key on-screen elements, effectively reducing the ease of play.

"It becomes really hard to see all the profiles. Look at the tables and see how hard it is to see the profiles of those," he offered. "The biggest problem here is that the silhouettes don’t stand out enough... If there are three other types of creatures in there—which is not uncommon—and give them all that same desaturated tone, you won’t be able to play the game very well."

"You’ve got to think that there’s potentially up to seven other people in addition to yourself, and several dozen monsters. All that noise just translates into unplayable, especially when this starts moving."

Speaking on the oft-maligned and heavily analyzed presence of rainbows in the first few Diablo III screenshots, Wilson dismissed suggestions that the colorful arcs indicated a brighter tone for the latest title.

"After the announcement, one of our environment artists went to the darkest area in Act One and put a giant rainbow across the whole area," Wilson revealed. "No, you’re probably not going to see a ton of rainbows. But we don’t think the one that’s in there is that big a deal."

He concluded, "When you pull all the color out of the environment and you make it too homogeneous across the game, essentially what you’re doing is you’re pulling away the player’s reward of feeling like they’ve progressed because the area they’re in now looks like the area they were in 30 to 45 minutes ago."