A few months ago, Blizzard mentioned that they were transitioning away from using the Battle.net name. Now, keep in mind that Battle.net has long been a name that gamers familiar with Blizzard used. You name it, Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft, World of Warcraft, all used Battle.net. Then for some reason, they wanted to align all their services with their actual name, Blizzard.
So they told everyone they would be renaming the Battle.net service to just Blizzard. This of course seemed like a really odd move, from a gamer’s and industry perspective. Why change something that everyone was familiar with? But it didn’t matter and the name change was happening. Since then, however, we kept noticing that Blizzard would opt in for Battle.net instead of Blizzard. It wasn’t just in one announcement or email. In fact, it kept happening over and over. I jokingly mentioned that perhaps even Blizzard’s own employees couldn’t remember that Battle.net was supposed to be dead.
But was it really dead? Well, we know that as of today, it isn’t. Blizzard is now singing a different tune and has officially announced that Battle.net is, well, Battle.net again.
When we announced that we’d be transitioning away from the Battle.net name for our online-gaming service, we suspected that the shift would be challenging. We understood that Battle.net stood for something special—it represents years of shared history and enjoyment, community and friendship, for all of us and our players.
Battle.net is the central nervous system for Blizzard games and the connective tissue that has brought Blizzard players together since 1996. The technology was never going away, but after giving the branding change further consideration and also hearing your feedback, we’re in agreement that the name should stay as well. Take it from the developer formerly known as Silicon & Synapse, and Chaos Studios, names are important too.
Moving forward, to help offset some of the original concerns we listed back in September, we will be connecting “Blizzard” to “Battle.net” in our logo for the service and in general when we refer to it in print: Blizzard Battle.net.
We appreciate your feedback and look forward to many more years of bringing players together online.
Thanks,
Blizzard Entertainment
I’m glad they wised up. Battle.net had a legacy, it was the first online gateway for gaming, so it’s only fitting that it survives on. So for those who never stopped saying Battle.net, carry on. For everyone else, it’s Battle.net, not Blizzard. Ok?
