Culture news and discussion on TalkFuse.
Blizzard Has No Plans To Turn Battle.net Into A Steam Competitor
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
Blizzard has confirmed that its Battle.net storefront will not follow Steam or the Epic Games Store towards an open, self-publishing model, despite adding high-profile third-party titles such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077 before the end of the year. Speaking to Polygon at BlizzCon, Blizzard's Andrew Guerrero said the company remains deliberately selective about what it adds, insisting curation matters more than growing the catalogue, and that Battle.net will never reach "a place where it's, like, hit the self-publish button, everything flows through".
Battle.net launched in 1997 alongside the original Diablo and for two decades carried only Blizzard's own games, before Destiny 2 arrived in 2017 and other Activision series, including Call of Duty and Crash Bandicoot, followed. Since Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the platform has also picked up Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda titles such as Avowed, Sea of Thieves, The Outer Worlds 2 and Doom: The Dark Ages. Guerrero said each addition is judged on whether it would appeal specifically to Blizzard's existing audience, rather than through the wide-open publishing model used by rival storefronts, leaving the CD Projekt Red titles' reception to determine what, if anything, follows.
- Sources
- 3
- Outlets
- 3
- Left · Centre · Right
- 0 · 0 · 0
In short
- Battle.net won't become an open, Steam-style publishing platform, Blizzard says.
- The Witcher 3 Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077 join Battle.net by year's end.
- Blizzard says future additions will stay curated and selective, not broad.
How this story developed
- 2 months ago Blizzard has told Polygon that its confirmation of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077 coming to Battle.net before the end of the year should not be seen as a sign the storefront is opening up broadly to third-party publishers.
- 2 months ago Blizzard has confirmed that CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077 will arrive on Battle.net before the end of the year, but the studio has told Polygon this should not be read as a sign of a wider opening-up of its storefront to third-party publishers.
- 2 months ago Blizzard has confirmed that its Battle.net storefront will not follow Steam or the Epic Games Store towards an open, self-publishing model, despite adding high-profile third-party titles such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077 before the end of the year.
- 2 months ago Blizzard has confirmed that CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077 will arrive on Battle.net before the end of the year, marking a notable expansion of third-party content on the platform.
- Rock Paper Shotgun Blizzard say Battle.net isn't looking to fight Steam and Epic for supermassive storefront supremacy, despite recently nabbing The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077
- Polygon Blizzard Has No Plans To Turn Battle.net Into A Steam Competitor
- GamesRadar+ Blizzard isn't "trying to do the Steam or Epic Games Store thing" by putting Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 Remastered on Battle.net, says exec
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates of Blizzard's curated approach argue that Battle.net's value lies precisely in its narrow, quality-controlled focus rather than in scale for its own sake. By adding only titles it judges will resonate with its existing community, such as major Activision, Bethesda and Xbox Game Studios releases, Blizzard can maintain a coherent, trusted storefront rather than diluting it with the vast and uneven catalogue that open platforms like Steam carry. This also protects Blizzard from the costs and support burden of running a full self-publishing marketplace, letting it concentrate resources on the games its players actually came for.
The case against
Critics of this cautious strategy would argue that gamers and smaller developers benefit most when platforms compete openly, since broader storefront competition tends to drive down prices, improve features and give players more choice about where to buy and manage their libraries. By deliberately keeping Battle.net closed to all but a handpicked set of publishers, Blizzard is arguably prioritising brand control and predictability over the wider ecosystem benefits that a genuinely open marketplace, with equal access for independent and third-party developers, could offer both consumers and the industry.
Explained simply
Blizzard's Battle.net is the company's own online platform for buying and playing PC games, first launched in 1997 alongside Diablo. For most of its life it only carried Blizzard's own titles, such as World of Warcraft and Overwatch, unlike rival services Steam and the Epic Games Store, which host games from many different publishers.
That began to change after Destiny 2 joined in 2017, and further after Microsoft bought Blizzard's parent company, Activision Blizzard, bringing titles like Call of Duty and Doom onto the platform too. The upcoming addition of CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered continues this trend, since neither company is owned by Microsoft or Blizzard.
This matters because it raises the question of whether Battle.net is evolving into a broader marketplace open to any publisher, in direct competition with Steam and Epic. Blizzard executive Andrew Guerrero has been addressing that question directly, explaining the company's thinking on how far this expansion will go.
Coverage · 3 sources
- PolygonBlizzard Has No Plans To Turn Battle.net Into A Steam Competitor
- Rock Paper ShotgunBlizzard say Battle.net isn't looking to fight Steam and Epic for supermassive storefront supremacy, despite recently nabbing The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077
- GamesRadar+Blizzard isn't "trying to do the Steam or Epic Games Store thing" by putting Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 Remastered on Battle.net, says exec
Art Culture Cybersecurity Entertainment Gaming Technology