Blizzard is planning to drop the Battle.net name over the coming months as it focuses instead on building its own Blizzard brand through its products.
All Blizzard games actively using Battle.net, including CCG Hearthstone, will continue to use the technology, but the branding will be altered to reflect this decision.
Recent additions to Blizzard's technology, including Blizzard Streaming and Blizzard Voice, have already indicated that this change was underway.
Holding all the cards
"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," explained the company in a blog post.
"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."