Blizzard Drops Battle.Net Name For Multiplayer Client

Blizzard has been synonymous with its Battle.net multiplayer client since its launch in the mid-’90s, but the developer finally retired the multiplayer system’s old name. Via Gamasutra, users on reddit noticed Friday that that Blizzard’s multiplayer client had dropped its Battle.net logo and replaced it with standard Blizzard branding.

The change in naming was first announced back in September 2016 by Blizzard. The developer won’t change any of the existing backend multiplayer technology for its games, but instead drop the separate Battle.net branding for its multiplayer features.

“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.”

Read: Blizzard Announces End Of ‘World Of Warcraft,’ ‘Diablo III’ And Other Games On Windows XP, Vista

Battle.net originally launched in 1996 alongside the original Diablo as a basic multiplayer client, but as Blizzard’s catalog grew to include titles like Starcraft and World of Warcraft , the client became a central part of the multiplayer experience for Blizzard fans. While the change in branding won’t result in major changes for gamers, the old Battle.net logo still holds sentimental value for a lot of Blizzard fans.

“It's such a minor thing,” reddit user StarboundSavy said. “And sort of funny that it bothers me so much, but it's going to take awhile to get used to the new icon on my system tray.”