It's been nearly a year since Blizzard announced that they would change the name of their proprietary online multiplayer service Battle.net, so many of us scratched our head when Bungie announced that Destiny 2 would launch on Battle.net during their reveal a few months later. This was only one of many cases where Blizzard's name-changing plans were nowhere to be found, and now we know why.
The studio has announced that they're not actually going to change the name all that much. In fact, it'll pretty much remain the same. All they're going to do is connect "Blizzard" to "Battle.net" in their logo for the service and in general when they refer to it in print. This means that Battle.net will now be referred to as Blizzard Battle.net. Their reasoning is quite simple:
"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."
At least the new name makes it clear that Battle.net is a part of Blizzard's services. Do you have a soft spot for the Battle.net brand?