After losing Blizzard Co-Founder Chris Metzen last week to retirement, Blizzard Entertainment is saying goodbye to another long-time staple; the Battle.Net brand.
That's right, after 20 years, the Battle.Net brand is going away. Blizzard originally built Battle.Net for online multiplayer connectivity for the original Diablo. It seems silly now, given our massively interconnected world, but 20 years ago there was almost nothing like it (Save Heat.Net and TEN).
"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 mutliplayer support is a well understood concept and more of a normal expectation these days, there isn't much of a need to maintain a separate identity for what is essentiailly our networking technology." Blizzard said in a statement.
Blizzard also has gone on to point out that it has been slowly transitioning away from the Battle.Net brand for some time (Blizzard Voice and Blizzard Stream are the latest examples).
So we say goodbye to Battle.Net. Its been an incredible ride. We look forward to seeing what Blizzard has in store in a few weeks at Blizzcon 2016.