Blizzard retires Battle.net naming scheme

Battle.net, the name of Blizzard's online multiplayer service, is no longer called "Battle.net".

Blizzard has made the strange decision to re-name one of PC gaming's most iconic online services in a confusing bid to make things more easily understandable. The Activision-owned publisher won't be calling their online service "Battle.net" any more, and will instead refer to it as "Blizzard tech." At the time of writing, the Battle.net address is still up and the service is still called the same.

Why the company would choose to forgo decades of an instantly recognizable and iconic name still isn't clear to me, and I'm actually concerned about this move--ever since Blizzard moved from the awesome Battle.net servers that powered Diablo 2, Starcraft and Warcraft to the horrible lobby-less "Bnet 2.0" system, I understood how Activision's meddling would affect the future of Blizzard. Now more than ever it seems I was right on the money.

"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 it as Blizzard tech 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."