10 Things Blizzard Want You To Forget
All big companies have skeletons in their closet. Some more than most.
No company is perfect. From the smallest independent developer to a juggernaut publisher, they're forever run by people. And people, by default, are flawed and will make mistakes.
That is okay, but the bigger you are, the harder it is to erase those faults, and there are not many bigger names in the world of video games than Blizzard.
Throughout their 29 year life, Blizzard has curated some of the industries most beloved IPs. Across generations, from the lofty early days of real-time strategies like Warcraft and Starcraft through to the eSports phenomenons Hearthstone and Overwatch.
Blizzard has had a significant voice in the video games market. It would be naive then to assume that they've played everything straight and never put a foot wrong.
However, some of these missteps are legendary.
These mistakes range from bizarre - if minor - business choices, right through to cataclysmic stumbles that find the company on the news site front pages across the board. One thing is for certain though - Blizzard would like to sweep these controversies under the rug as soon as viably possible.
10. Rebranding Battle.net... And Then Changing Their Minds
Battle.net is an industry icon. Released in the lofty days of dial-up internet in 1996, alongside the release of dungeon crawler epic, Diablo.
The Battle.net name has been synonymous with some of video games greatest accomplishments, and players fondest memories. This made Blizzard's decision to move away from the Battle.net branding to the much blander "Blizzard" in 2016 very confusing.
At the time, Blizzard cited "occasional confusion and inefficiencies related to having two separate identities" as the core reason for the shift away from its iconic brand name. Naturally, hardcore Blizzard fans were outraged. The name Battle.net had been there through the good times and the bad for 20 years, and choosing to change it over "occasional confusion" felt like overkill.
This change didn't stick.
Less than 6 months later, Blizzard advertised that Destiny 2 would be running through their service Battle.net. Fans, and seemingly employees at Blizzard, were confused about what the name of the service was now. It took Blizzard another 4 months to finally clear up confusion, by releasing a statement saying the official name for Blizzard's online client is "Blizzard Battle.net".
It was a messy attempt at re-branding that could have been a lot smoother had the company been transparent from the off.