Blizzard to Rebrand Launcher to “The Client Formerly Known as Battle.net”

The service will not technically be renamed, and will be referred to simply as “Blizzard tech” moving forward. But 20 years later, things have changed. The company believes that having a different identity for their online platform was causing unnecessary confusion.

Since the very beginning of Blizzard’s online services it has been called Battle.Net but that is about to change.

At the time, dedicated services (like TEN and Heat.net) for playing games online were commonplace; now that they aren’t, Blizzard says it’s time to do away with the “Battle.net” name. Given that built-in multiplayer support are 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. This was most definitely not the case when it the platform originally launched alongside Diablo. While the update doesn’t offer a concrete timeline on when the Battle.net service is expected to officially rebrand, Blizzard indicated the transition will happen “over the next several months”, after which Battle.net will be referred to just like Blizzard’s other “Blizzard tech” services, like Blizzard Streaming and Blizzard Voice. “Blizzard tech” is described in the post as a catch-all term for various interconnected services, including “Blizzard Streaming”, which now lets players tie their Blizzard credentials to a Facebook account to stream live gameplay on their Facebook accounts, and “Blizzard Voice”, a cross-game VOIP system that still only exists in an alpha state. The answer probably lies in the fact that we’re not seeing just a straight-up name change. Still, today the veteran PC gamers at Ars are revving up their nostalgia and softly whispering the phrase “zug zug” in honor of the original name. Let us know in the comments section below!