Just over a month ago, Microsoft publicly announced their intention to acquire Activision Blizzard in a record-breaking $69 Billion all-cash deal. Although the deal still needs to go through the proper regulatory approvals, many in the gaming space are considering it a done deal with Microsoft's previous acquisitions going through without a hitch. After the announcement, Activision Blizzard's stock price jumped back up after it took a dive in November following the news of delays for Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4, and further dives after additional articles came out stating that "Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Knew for Years About Sexual-Misconduct Allegations" to which Activision Blizzard followed it up stating they were "disappointed" in the Wall Street Journal's report and stated it was "misleading".
Buy high, sell low, it's the WallStreetBets way.
This deal, also announced by Activision Blizzard, brought up Microsoft's Game Pass offering, which for a monthly subscription fee, you receive access to hundreds of games in Microsoft's collection. The statement indicated that the acquisition would "bolster Microsoft's Game Pass portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass". Although no exact details were provided on which games of the bunch would end up on Game Pass, we suspect Call of Duty will be a large subscription driver to games as service for Microsoft.
Quote From Activision Blizzard Investor Relations The acquisition also bolsters Microsoft's Game Pass portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass, which has reached a new milestone of over 25 million subscribers. With Activision Blizzard's nearly 400 million monthly active players in 190 countries and three billion-dollar franchises, this acquisition will make Game Pass one of the most compelling and diverse lineups of gaming content in the industry. Upon close, Microsoft will have 30 internal game development studios, along with additional publishing and esports production capabilities.
Xbox and PC Game Pass
It's hard as a gamer to not hear about Game Pass because it's advertised constantly to us. Plenty of new AAA releases are available day 1 on Game Pass, making the subscription that much more enticing if you enjoy playing plenty of titles that end up in Microsoft's and their partner's hands.
Microsoft makes these games available through Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass through the Xbox app on Microsoft Windows, and on Microsoft's own Xbox series of consoles. Buying into the service means getting to access your content in one simple to use place, or two if you play on both console and PC. Microsoft also has begun offering their titles on Valve's Steam platform, such as the recent-ish Halo: Master Chief Collection and the new Halo Infinite, though if you have Game Pass you won't see any integration which the former game requiring a full purchase even if you are already a Game Pass subscriber. Which, makes sense when you consider Microsoft wants you on their platforms.
Master Chief with Microsoft's Cortana, the AI assistant that should have stayed in Halo.
So, what does that mean for Blizzard's own Battle.net launcher, which also hosts Activision's recent suite of games, mostly the yearly iteration of Call of Duty?
Bethesda Shuts Down the Bethesda Launcher
Today, Bethesda announced that they are shutting down their own launcher in May of this year. The shutdown includes a move to Steam.
Bethesda was officially acquired by Microsoft on March 9, 2021, and the Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, made a post about it on Xbox Wire. So, a little under a year after the acquisition became official, they have decided to trashcan their own launcher which made its debut back in 2016. It's no secret that it requires a team to properly maintain a games launcher, and it's certainly no surprise that Microsoft may be making the push to consolidate it's teams and branding to get games under the same umbrella.
Wait, did people use Bethesda's launcher?
Here's what players that are using the Bethesda launcher need to know about the shutdown:
- In early April, you can start the migration process.
- All your games will migrate to Steam for free.
- Any purchases will also migrate to Steam for free. That includes virtual currency and DLC.
- Many game saves will transfer, some will require manual copying. (Details)
- Some Bethesda titles are still going to require that you have a Bethesda.net account to play.
- You may not migrate your games to Xbox or PlayStation, it's only for PC.
Getting rid of "just another game launcher" isn't a bad call, but what does that mean for the legacy of Battle.net?
Battle.net, Blizzard's Place to Play
Blizzard introduced Battle.net all the way back at the end of 1996, officially being used when Diablo launched on January 3, 1997. The service connected players to chat and find multiplayer games to play via listings. Battle.net was next integrated into StarCraft when it released in 1998 and then again in it's expansion, StarCraft: Broodwar. Diablo II, the Lords of Destruction expansion, and then Warcraft III also all received the Battle.net treatment and it was great because you could see your friends online playing other games and even send messages to them.
Now that takes me back. (Image Source)
Battle.net became a large part of Blizzard's identity and although it wasn't originally featured in the massive World of Warcraft, Blizzard decided to give Battle.net an update. Battle.net 2.0 was revealed in 2009 with it becoming publicly available to World of Warcraft players prior to the launch of Starcraft II, the first game to truly make use of what players thought of when they saw Battle.net.
Hell, it's about time. (Image Source)
Blizzard then went on to make use of their revamped Battle.net platform through the launch of Diablo III in 2012 and decided that it was time to create a proper desktop client. The Battle.net Desktop App released in August 2013.
Naming Woes
Blizzard's naming team really dropped the ball when it came to Battle.net, a name so ingrained in gamers that were a part of the platform. In 2017, Blizzard has the ultra-giga-brain idea to phase out Battle.net as a brand that was used for over 20 years. The desktop app was renamed to the "Blizzard App" and received a new, annoying, icon.
Quote From Blizzard We’re going to be transitioning away from using the Battle.net name for our gaming service and the functionality connected to it. Battle.net technology will continue to serve as the central nervous system for Blizzard games—nothing is changing in that regard. We'll just be referring to our various products and services using the Blizzard name instead. You've already seen this recently with things like "Blizzard Streaming" and "Blizzard Voice," and more changes are on the way.
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. 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.
We just wanted to make sure everyone was aware as we moved forward with this change over the next several months; we’ll provide any relevant updates as the transition progresses.
The change wasn't well received and was quickly reverted when Blizzard realized that, they, maybe attaching the name Blizzard to Destiny 2, which was on the platform, wasn't a great idea. This saw the app receive a name change to the Blizzard Battle.net App.
Quote From Blizzard 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
Then, last year in 2021, Blizzard started off the year right with new fresh paint, a new logo, and reverting back to simply "Battle.net" for their games launcher.
That's better!
So, is Blizzard willing to kick it all to the curb again?
Probably.
With Microsoft at the helm of Activision Blizzard, it would make sense to condense their client teams. Activision Blizzard games will almost certainly be integrated into the Microsoft Xbox stack, with Game Pass being confirmed to be happening for some titles, and it wouldn't make much sense to keep Battle.net around since clearly, the execs didn't truly see the value in the Battle.net brand in recent years. Perhaps Microsoft feels differently and sees Battle.net as a worthy contender in the gaming space, but I wouldn't get our hopes up with them shuttering Bethesda's launcher.
This wouldn't be an easy task to ditch Battle.net entirely, the underlying infrastructure would almost certainly have to stick around in some capacity for legacy titles like Starcraft II and Diablo III, but for the games as a service titles that Blizzard has like Hearthstone and World of Warcraft, those teams could integrate into Microsoft's Xbox platform. Maybe this is where that controller support that World of Warcraft added at the end of last expansion finally gets to shine on an Xbox Console as an exclusive, and maybe Hearthstone makes it's way to consoles finally.
Ignoring the fact that these are PlayStation buttons, casual WoW play could work on consoles.
(ConsolePort WoW Addon)
Maybe we'll see Microsoft take the jump and force Call of Duty back onto Steam so that it can be enjoyed there once more while offering it as well on the Xbox launcher on Windows so that those with Games Pass can take advantage of the shooter without any hoops. Battle.net's days as a desktop app may be numbered once we see Activision Blizzard acquired by Microsoft.
And honestly, personally, as much as I would hate to see the Battle.net brand die off, I am getting fatigued by having a ton of different launchers. Had you of asked me a few years ago, I would have told you I love the separation that Battle.net gave me, but realistically, it feels like that one platform that stood out for no reason and it may even hurt the desire for folks to play Blizzard's titles.
Hearthstone is a great example where Battle.net can be irrelevant. You can install Hearthstone from the App Store or Google Play and immediately start playing without needing a Battle.net account. Of course, you do lose out on the friends list functionality and the ability to play on desktop, but Blizzard has no problem saving your unique player id to your iCloud account so they can tell what you own. That's pretty wild and it shows you at how important, on mobile, ease of access is. Players are expecting that easy accessibility of their games so needing all these launchers that aren't Steam and aren't Xbox, which is included with Windows by default now, is a bit of a pain point.
Don't you guys have phones?
I'm not worried about any monopolies forming because of it, gaming is already so condensed anyway with all the acquisitions and it's not like I've ever had a problem with Steam when it was the only real player in the market. If anything, Microsoft potentially stepping up their game and Epic continuing to dump hoards of Fortnite money into their own launcher is a net positive for gamers and developers since they are all somewhat open platforms when compared to the likes of EA's Origin (being revamped as EA Desktop) or Ubisoft's horrendous Uplay.
Though, Microsoft's Xbox app on Windows is hot garbage since they aren't doing a great job at managing a storefront or library, which is so essential to the gaming launcher experience, but at least they'll be acquiring the folks who made the Battle.net frontend so there is a chance we could see those skills moved over to the other platform.
Kill off Battle.net just like you killed off the Bethesda launcher, Microsoft. I'll add even more time to Game Pass, though I'm also fully expecting World of Warcraft on there and I cannot wait to see what kind of numbers that game pulls in months after it's almost certain addition to Game Pass, so I might be a little bit biased in wanting to see the move.
Comments
God I hope so. And I hope it's not replaced by anything either. If you aren't already you can load blizzard games without using the launcher and it's faster and easier.(except when they need to be updated ofc)
When every Blizzard games ported to Steam, does this mean "that" game can finally have a holiday sale that we all have been waiting for?
I mean, it's been 7+ years, and not a single sale has happened.
Isn't that pretty much what pack bundles are? Instead of paying 20$ for 15 packs you can buy a bundle with, let's say 20 packs and a skin, for the same price.
Oh cmon, a sale is a sale. It doesn't feel fair if the other games got one.
Honestly, no one cares what you feel about being "fair". Hearthstones monetary model is built in different way than games with single price.
As Suchti mentioned above, sale is the card bundle in HS. But, on the other hand, they could create for example of a Spring Sale bundle of 15 standard packs for 10 USD purchasable once. That would be nice and would make them a lot of money.
I miss the days when you just installed a game and ran it, and didn't need launchers at all. Steam offered a good service to provide download pipes for small developers, but every mega-corp wanting to keep users in their own garden is obnoxious.
Yeah: having one launcher is great, having your game collection spread over multiple separate launchers is not.
Well, same can be said about streaming services, there's Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime etc and worse, you have to pay a subscription for each. Also, it'd be a scary world if there was just 1 game launcher to rule them all (like Steam) coz monopolies in general are bad.
The fragmentation of streaming services is a problem, in my opinion. With music, you can pick one service and get access to reasonable chunk of popular music. With video, I haven't bothered signing up for any of them since I don't want to spend the time researching which service has which series that I might enjoy. Even worse, this changes over time as new series are released and old series disappear when licensing agreements expire.
Ideally, a user would be able to pick the game, the store and the launcher independently. Having different games available in different stores and/or launchers restricts rather than expands the options for users. For example, on Android you can install Hearthstone from Google Play or from Amazon's store, so you can decide who you'd rather give your money and data to (even if it is picking a lesser evil), but on PC your only options are to use Battle.net or play a different game and that inflexibility means there is hardly any competitive pressure to improve the store or the launcher.
If I could buy a game in one store and automatically get it in my library on all platforms, that would be great. But instead of trying to figure out how something useful like that can be implemented using blockchain tech, everyone is trying to get rich selling pointless cosmetics.
I miss when it was just Netflix, lol.
At one point I had subscriptions to Netflix, Prime Video (well, that's sorta cheating), Disney+, Crave (Canada service that gets a bunch of HBO content), and Apple TV. Mind you, everything other than Prime Video showed no advertisements so even though it was a steep cost, it was still a thousand times better than cable could ever hope to achieve.
I also have been a YouTube Premium member since it first came available because it's so much nicer to be able to support creators through that and never have to see an ad - though the people with 2 ads baked into their videos now for the Skillshares and whatever have you is a bit much.
Netflix & Crave are my currently services, with Billions being my craving of choice which interestingly is sort of how my life is with game launchers since I normally only use two at the same time (currently being Steam + Battle.net, haven't touched Game Pass in a bit) with PUBG, Sun Haven, and World of Warcraft on my now playing list.
I don't know where I was going with any of that but yeah, monopolies in general are bad and I'm glad we've got some new choices. I think I could live with a triopoly if everything came down to Steam + Epic + Xbox since I don't really have an issue with any of the companies and I could never see them all working together like telecom does in Canada (our Duopoly here is notorious for screwing everyone over at the same time, at the very least you could wine and dine me before you **** me).
Ohhh, Starcraft's old battle.net, that brings back memories. I was a kid not knowing English, not knowing what the hell it did, kinda afraid to click on it to not break something, to be honest :D But mashing random menu buttons got me to discover a custom game lobby where I could play different maps than those from the campaign and that opened up world of new possibilities :D Good times!
I actually like the Battle.net launcher. It's pretty clean, I have all of the Blizzard games I play in one place and represented with big Icons (and don't have to search their names in a library) and I like the ability to see news of other Blizzard games too.
I'm also not sure what featues the Bethesda launcher has (other than being buggy as I heard), but all of the Blizzard games use the Battle.net account name and friendlist, which presumably would also not be transfer over to another launcher.
I love the design of the Battle.net launcher. The social features used to be cool but honestly, with Discord being the primary player in gaming communication now, I never really use anything chat on any other platform so the Battle.net launcher just became exactly that - a launcher.
It has a great design though as I said and I'd love if they could make elements work on the Xbox app. Xbox app needs some serious love, and bug fixing.
Friends list would probably become Xbox friends, or maybe they keep Battle.net around for friends too, having a "you can use Xbox or Battle.net". I think the Call of Duty folks on the Activision side wouldn't care as much if they were to lose Battle.net friends, but I could see that being a pain point for the "Blizzard gamer" who has had the same friends list for over a decade.
Battle.net is not bad, but it could have been used better. They could have done a lot more community and e-sports integration into their launcher, for example. If I didn't read this site, I wouldn't have know about last weekend's Master's Tour.
Yeah, they've really dropped the ball on just "news" when it comes to Hearthstone. WoW has some good updates though they aren't as plentiful as they could be and I suppose they assume the remaining players just use Wowhead anyway which has a great feed.
Hearthstone though... Hearthstone's playerbase is mostly on mobile and they have no good way of showing them content so they just don't bother. It's pathetic for a AAA company to not properly leverage media. Oh but wait, they posted that meme on Twitter.
Not to mention that they don't put everything in their patch notes so key feature additions or bug fixes have to be tweeted about or discovered by players. =/
I genuinely feel bad for the developer side of Hearthstone because people have put in so much work over the years but their community team and marketing sucks at their job. Which.. is confusing because they have some great people. I can only imagine it's red tape that keeps them from doing anything worthwhile.
While I have no numbers to back this up, I can imagine that on average people who play only on mobile would be more casual than people who (also) play on desktop. So the kind of audience who is interested in e-sports and community content would be more likely to use Battle.net.
Besides, they have the news feed viewer already, they only need to push more content to it. They did start doing a bit of this by highlighting community content every once in a while, but they could have done it much more regularly. In fact, a significant portion of what they did highlight was items they sponsored.
Actually, now that I look more closely at Battle.net again, there is more content there than I thought, but I have to scroll past old featured items to get to the news. For example, the announcement of Grandmasters this weekend is invisible unless I scroll down: full height window at 1080p and it's off screen. That's just bad design.
I don't think red tape can be to blame for all of it. Things like incomplete patch notes points to there not being enough structure in their way of working rather than too much of it.
The feeling I get from Hearthstone is that once the prototype became a success, they've never had a quiet moment to rethink their code, tools and processes. The way their broadcast client is a Frankenstein video composition for example, where half the time discover options are showing card backs instead of the face sides. Faeria had an in-house e-sports client used for broadcasts and that was made by an actual small indie company.