Blizzard Games Coming to Steam, Starting With Overwatch 2 on August 10 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 August 2023 / 4,446 Views
Blizzard Entertainment announced a selection of its games will be coming to PC via Steam, starting with Overwatch 2 on August 10.
A number of PC versions of Blizzard games have only been available on Battle.net, including Overwatch 2, Diablo IV and Diablo Immortal.
In order to play Overwatch 2 on Steam, players will still need a Battle.net account connected to the game. The Steam version will also support Steam achievements and friends lists.
"It’s our goal at Blizzard to listen to players and try to exceed their expectations in everything we do," said Blizzard Entertainment President Mike Ybarra. "While Battle.net remains a priority for us now and into the future, we’ve heard players want the choice of Steam for a selection of our games, starting with Overwatch 2 on August 10th. We’re happy to work with Valve to make that happen."
Valve President Gabe Newell added, "Gamers and developers are both going to benefit from Overwatch 2 coming to Steam. Gamers will have another platform where they can play a beloved game that utilizes the capabilities of Steam, and developers will benefit from the effects of having the talented team at Blizzard helping us evolve our supported features and functionality for Overwatch 2."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This is exactly what we want to see happen. Games using the best free service available on the PC market. I like Battle.net but Steam is the home.
It still requires you to use both the battlenet account system and client, so really, Blizz is just siphoning Steam's userbase while treating Steam as the second launcher, not the primary.
While it's nice to see them finally coming to Steam, I strongly feel it would have been better to not have to install another client just to launch games from Steam. You should be using Steam to play games on there, not buy them on Steam and have to use multiple clients just to play single games.
At the absolute very least, they could have gone and done what MS does and just have you auto logged into XBL when you boot up an MS game from Steam, instead of needing another client to launch the game like Ubisoft/R* demand.
Steam page has small fine print on the Overwatch 2 page that requires you to use the account/client.
Someone posted the screen on a discord channel I view just today and that's when I went "yeah, just like Uplay/R* clients then, I'm out".
While it sounds great for Blizz, it's not ideal for customers to have to fumble with multiple clients, but for Blizz this just means they get to purely siphon Steam users into making Battlenet accounts, making it easier for Blizz to turn around and boast about increased OW2 numbers from Steam, as well as battlenet account creations.
What I'd really like to see once this deal is over and done with, is for MS to just allow Steam users to remain with Steam accounts, or at the very least, integrate XBL network for games like OW2, because there's no way I'm gonna buy anything from Blizz on Steam, if I'm still being told to use both the battlenet account and client, I may as well just buy it on the battlenet client that I already use daily.
Hmmm. Could you send me a link to the screenshot? I'm checking the Steampage for Overwatch 2, and I Ctrl+F the word "Battle" and the closest thing I found in the fine print was this about needing an account:
"Internet connection and Battle.net® Account required to play. A mobile phone number must be linked to your Battle.net® Account to play Overwatch® 2."
I am not sure if Steam will have standalone versions for current games however this is carving out the future for future Blizzard titles. Hoping so anyway.
The power of Steam is unmatched. If it's only a selection of games, I fully expect World of Warcraft and Diablo IV at the least to make their way over to Steam. Maybe Hearthstone as well.
I suspected this might happen but only after the acquisition by Microsoft closed. MS already have their own storefront so they don’t need Battle.Net.
Wondering if they will indeed fold Bettle.Net into the Xbox PC Store.
Not entirely sure, but if they are to release WoW onto Steam, it would take considerable time to migrate all the decades worth of accounts and data of said accounts over to XBL, and even then ppl have to agree to this and it can become a touchy subject (as I'm sure not everyone playing WoW might not want to have their accounts migrated from battlenet to XBL).
I imagine something like that will happen... didn't Bethesda launcher cease to exist after the Microsoft acquisition or was it before?
Moving the games from battle.net might get a few more sales but it’ll weaken the Bnet client. Once they start I can see them using it less and less.
It’s a shame, I like it. Steam is a great shop but can sometimes feel overwhelming esp as you build up a library. Keeping (v high quality) blizz games on pc in one place was/is nice.
Honestly, I already saw battlenet as an unneeded launcher for years. Back in the days when I was playing WoW day in and out, all I originally needed was to launch and update WoW and login directly from the WoW launcher.
Battlenet became a requirement as a full on client over the years and it only improved visually, but it still acted bare bones and only ever had Blizzard games until 6 years ago.
‘It’s our goal at Blizzard to listen to players and try to exceed their expectations in everything we do," said Blizzard Entertainment President Mike Ybarra“…..total vomit. If this propagandist isn’t sacked after MS acquires Blizzard, then it’s another Booty & Spencer fail.
