Twenty years after it was introduced to host chat and multiplayer matchmaking in the original Diablo, Blizzard has announced it is to “transition” away from its Battle.net branding and unite online services under the Blizzard name.
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In a blog post on its World of Warcraft website, the company claimed there had been cases of “confusion” over the years that hampered is ability to run Battle.net the best it could.
“When we created Battle.net, the idea of including a tailored online-gaming service together with your game was more of a novel concept, so we put a lot of focus on explaining what the service was and how it worked, including giving it a distinct name,” details Blizzard in the blog posr.
“Over time, though, we’ve seen that there’s been occasional confusion and inefficiencies related to having two separate identities under which everything falls—Blizzard and Battle.net. Given that built-in multiplayer support is a well-understood concept and more of a normal expectation these days, there isn’t as much of a need to maintain a separate identity for what is essentially our networking technology.”
The lovely folks at Blizzard state tne move away from Battle.net will take place “over the next several months” and that the technology behind the services will remain the same – it’s just the name that’s changing.
“You’ve already seen this recently with things like Blizzard Streaming and Blizzard Voice, and more changes are on the way,” the firm concluded.
Check out the blog post in full here.