Blizzard backs on decision to drop Battle.net name

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that it will not drop the Battle.net name after all, as the developer originally announced last year. The company states that the name is strongly linked to its history.

Instead, it has decided to merge its brand names, resulting in the Blizzard Battle.net designation. This name will appear in the logo of the service and when Blizzard refers to the service. The developer writes: “When we announced we were leaving the Battle.net name behind, we realized it was going to be a challenge. We understood that the name stands for something special; it stands for years of shared history, fun, community and friendship.”

Blizzard points out that it has received a lot of feedback after the decision to drop the name and now agrees that it should stay. The company announced its decision last September, saying that its own portal is no longer so special that it deserves its own name. It had already started phasing out the name when designating its new services. In March, Blizzard removed the Battle.net designation from its desktop client and replaced the logo with its own Blizzard logo.

Battle.net was launched in November 1996, at the time of the first Diablo game. In 2009, Blizzard announced Battle.net 2.0, which is used for the studio’s most recent games. What became known as Battle.net Classic is used for older games from the studio, such as Diablo II, Warcraft III and StarCraft.