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I imagine this probably means the eventual death of Battle.net as well. Honestly though, it's time. Battle.net was incredible back in the day, but now it's just

I imagine this probably means the eventual death of Battle.net as well. Honestly though, it's time. Battle.net was incredible back in the day, but now it's just another annoying launcher that segments my friends lists.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
I'm curious as to that one. As launchers go it's excellent, so I'm not sure if they want to get rid of it or expand it out to support more things - after all Microsoft, who can't even get app updates to work correctly in their own windows store on their own game launcher, just bought it along with a bunch of other stuff. I guess I should be annoyed that more non-blizzard stuff will end up on it, but boy oh boy has that particular ship sailed.
rainonmoon 5y ago
Why would this have anything to do with Battle.net? There are not insignificant portions of the playerbase fully bought into that ecosystem (like... every World of Warcraft player, for a start.) The Launcher itself has been around for almost 10 years; the network has been around for twice that. Bethesda's launcher on the other hand was always an afterthought.
EamonnMR 5y ago
Battle.net when it was IRC was a great time.
aparticulate 5y ago
The population of Battle.net is WAY bigger than the tiny fraction of players using Bethesda launcher. Hard to know from the outside but it's probably like 95%+ Steam even on their newest games. NexusMods, the largest Bethesda modding host rarely mentions the launcher even if mods are compatible. Battle.net on the other hand predates Steam and they made some of the most significant PC-only games of all time. Having said that, I think you might be right for a different reason. Blizzard will likely eat a massive amount of humble pie post-2021 and Steam releases would seem like a reasonable gesture of to restoring community goodwill.
- 015a 5y ago
  Battle.net The Launcher doesn't pre-date Steam; it was released in the early 2010s. Previously, before Steam, Battle.net was a lot more nebulous, and would naturally have had less user lock-in. Games were individually distributed, and battle.net was more-so just an infrastructure-level system Blizzard used to coordinate online games, chat, etc. Even, IIRC, unified profiles weren't a thing until the early 2010s and the desktop app was launched; WoW was different from Starcraft, which was different from Diablo. That is to say, yeah Battle.net today has far more users than the Bethesda launcher, but it still predominately suffers from the "users don't want to be here, its just where the games are at" issue that the Bethesda & Rockstar launchers suffer from. I think it's likely that the Xbox acquisition will result in a sunset of Battle.net as well. It'll probably resemble a long-term plan like: deeper Battle.net/Xbox account integration to share purchases and social state, release of all titles on Steam & Xbox stores, forced migration of Battle.net accounts to Xbox accounts, deprecation of the Battle.net launcher; 2 years minimum, probably closer to 3.
  - beeboop 5y ago
    For context, battle.net the service has existed since 1996. Back in the day it was just used for the multiplayer component of games like Diablo and Warcraft. I think it's still meaningful to point this out because even if it wasn't a launcher like it is today, it was still a social media/communications platform which is a meaningful part of why people use certain launcher platforms/stores.
    - Macha 5y ago
      Of course, battle.net 1.0 wasn't continuous with battle.net 2.0 which launched with starcraft and eventually subsumed wow and d3 accounts. If you had some account on battle.net for brood war, it died with the move to remastered.
    - ywain 5y ago
      Yep! In fact, a few years ago Blizzard tried to sunset the Battle.net brand and rename the launcher to just Blizzard Launcher or something, and they eventually gave up on that because the community was really attached to the Battle.net name. For many gamers Battle.net was one of the first online experiences.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
There's a lot more to Battle.net than most launchers. For one, it's really deeply integrated into like every Blizzard game's chat and friends system. It'd be hard to imagine Blizzard retooling World of Warcraft's chat to accept messages from Steam users, but at present players in WoW and say Heroes of the Storm can chat with each other inside the games.
enra 5y ago
Battle.net is probably the only launcher that is quite as reliable and high quality as Steam. One example is that you can start playing WoW way before the download or install is complete. Downside is that they have been really pushing for upsells in the recent years. All other launchers are garbage. Origin doesn’t even render text properly on my 4k screen, and pretty much all of them forgets my login each week.
- modo_mario 5y ago
  It would be nice if it wasn't such a struggle on Linux. I remember getting their games to run with lutris and it worked fine but then one day their client updated and i never managed to log in again.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago

I'm curious as to that one. As launchers go it's excellent, so I'm not sure if they want to get rid of it or expand it out to support more things - after all Microsoft, who can't even get app updates to work correctly in their own windows store on their own game launcher, just bought it along with a bunch of other stuff. I guess I should be annoyed that more non-blizzard stuff will end up on it, but boy oh boy has that particular ship sailed.

rainonmoon 5y ago

Why would this have anything to do with Battle.net? There are not insignificant portions of the playerbase fully bought into that ecosystem (like... every World of Warcraft player, for a start.) The Launcher itself has been around for almost 10 years; the network has been around for twice that. Bethesda's launcher on the other hand was always an afterthought.

EamonnMR 5y ago

Battle.net when it was IRC was a great time.

aparticulate 5y ago

The population of Battle.net is WAY bigger than the tiny fraction of players using Bethesda launcher. Hard to know from the outside but it's probably like 95%+ Steam even on their newest games. NexusMods, the largest Bethesda modding host rarely mentions the launcher even if mods are compatible. Battle.net on the other hand predates Steam and they made some of the most significant PC-only games of all time. Having said that, I think you might be right for a different reason. Blizzard will likely eat a massive amount of humble pie post-2021 and Steam releases would seem like a reasonable gesture of to restoring community goodwill.

015a 5y ago
Battle.net The Launcher doesn't pre-date Steam; it was released in the early 2010s. Previously, before Steam, Battle.net was a lot more nebulous, and would naturally have had less user lock-in. Games were individually distributed, and battle.net was more-so just an infrastructure-level system Blizzard used to coordinate online games, chat, etc. Even, IIRC, unified profiles weren't a thing until the early 2010s and the desktop app was launched; WoW was different from Starcraft, which was different from Diablo. That is to say, yeah Battle.net today has far more users than the Bethesda launcher, but it still predominately suffers from the "users don't want to be here, its just where the games are at" issue that the Bethesda & Rockstar launchers suffer from. I think it's likely that the Xbox acquisition will result in a sunset of Battle.net as well. It'll probably resemble a long-term plan like: deeper Battle.net/Xbox account integration to share purchases and social state, release of all titles on Steam & Xbox stores, forced migration of Battle.net accounts to Xbox accounts, deprecation of the Battle.net launcher; 2 years minimum, probably closer to 3.
- beeboop 5y ago
  For context, battle.net the service has existed since 1996. Back in the day it was just used for the multiplayer component of games like Diablo and Warcraft. I think it's still meaningful to point this out because even if it wasn't a launcher like it is today, it was still a social media/communications platform which is a meaningful part of why people use certain launcher platforms/stores.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Of course, battle.net 1.0 wasn't continuous with battle.net 2.0 which launched with starcraft and eventually subsumed wow and d3 accounts. If you had some account on battle.net for brood war, it died with the move to remastered.
  - ywain 5y ago
    Yep! In fact, a few years ago Blizzard tried to sunset the Battle.net brand and rename the launcher to just Blizzard Launcher or something, and they eventually gave up on that because the community was really attached to the Battle.net name. For many gamers Battle.net was one of the first online experiences.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

There's a lot more to Battle.net than most launchers. For one, it's really deeply integrated into like every Blizzard game's chat and friends system. It'd be hard to imagine Blizzard retooling World of Warcraft's chat to accept messages from Steam users, but at present players in WoW and say Heroes of the Storm can chat with each other inside the games.

enra 5y ago

Battle.net is probably the only launcher that is quite as reliable and high quality as Steam. One example is that you can start playing WoW way before the download or install is complete. Downside is that they have been really pushing for upsells in the recent years. All other launchers are garbage. Origin doesn’t even render text properly on my 4k screen, and pretty much all of them forgets my login each week.

modo_mario 5y ago
It would be nice if it wasn't such a struggle on Linux. I remember getting their games to run with lutris and it worked fine but then one day their client updated and i never managed to log in again.