Blizzard Entertainment to Finally Bring Their Games to Steam Starting with Overwatch 2 - Hardcore Gamer

Blizzard said it has banned Diablo 4 players who used a character realm transfer exploit that went viral late July.

Shmup fans are getting a new set of arcade classics later this month with the launch of Toaplan Arcade Shoot ‘Em Up Collection Vol. 2. This collection will be bringing four more arcade shooters to PC, and each will be fully enhanced with a suite of new features. The games being brought forward this time include: Hellfire, Flying Shark, Slap Fight and Fire Shark. Let’s take a closer look at each.

Blizzard Entertainment is gearing up to release the sixth season of Overwatch 2 into the marketplace. If you’re eager to dive into the season, then anything marketing-wise might catch your attention. Well, it looks like one piece of marketing material managed to get out to the public before its actual scheduled release. The best part about this is that the actual president of Blizzard Entertainment was reportedly the individual responsible for the leak. Now fans are getting a quick peek into some of the upcoming season six skins.

The Destiny and Diablo communities went at each others’ throats on Twitter last month due to a comment made by a Destiny 2 developer who called out Diablo 4’s enemy scaling. He said that “it is one of the worst ideas in video games” and said that it takes away from playstyles and ruins power trips. Blizzard President Mike Ybarra responded with a simple “Lazy, huh.” but gamers on Twitter were divided over how games should adjust the difficulty.

It’s the battle of the free FPS games, as Valve’s Team Fortress 2 has briefly overtaken Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 in terms of concurrent Twitch viewers. With multiple reasons for the spike in viewers that overtook OW2, and the Blizzard shooter’s impending Steam release, it looks like it could be in for some friendly competition with Team Fortress 2 going forward.

Technical Director Monte Krol announced his departure from Blizzard Entertainment today, after nearly 23 years with the studio. Designer of many of the tools used by developers to create and maintain World of Warcraft, he's lent his voice and name to several aspects of the game, from the Krol Blade to the memorable Goblin voice line, «Time is money, friend!» Computer Engineering graduate Monte Krol began his career at Blizzard Entertainment after a friend introduced him to Diablo, becoming hooked and ordering the studio's next game, StarCraft, before even seeing it.

In what looks like a first, Blizzard will offer some of its games on Valve's Steam store.

Blizzard games will be coming to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2 on 10th August, giving PC gamers an option outside of Battle.net for where they buy and play their Blizzard games.

Blizzard is bringing a selection of its PC games over to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2. The free-to-play team-based shooter is headed to Valve's gaming client on August 10, in what appears to be a change in Blizzard's strategy due to its impending acquisition by Microsoft and the low player engagement the game has garnered in recent times. The Windows PC version of Overwatch 2 and other games from the publisher is largely restricted to its Battle.net launcher — a hot topic for most PC gamers, who prefer having all their games on one platform and hate having to juggle between them. The Steam version will also include the niceties of unlockable achievements and cross-platform multiplayer.

For a while now, Blizzard fans on PC have had to begrudgingly put up with Battle.net, the developer's very own launcher that it uses to boot up pretty much every game released by Activision Blizzard. It's a pain in the neck for any PC player to have to constantly download launchers for different games, but Battle.net is a particularly annoying example of a developer forcing its fans to put up with a subpar launcher when Steam is already installed on 90 percent of computers at this point.

Blizzard is taking its first tentative steps away from Battle.net exclusivity, starting with the launch of Overwatch 2 on Steam this August and the promise of more games on the way.

PC gaming can be a headache at times. There are a variety of PC launchers out there, and then you have a selection of games that are tied directly to these launchers. So sometimes starting up a PC means loading a few launchers with it, and then there’s the hunt to see what game you’re after is locked behind one of several launchers. Fortunately, the headache might ease up if only just a little. Blizzard has decided to finally open up the floodgates for their games and bring them over to the Steam launcher. But don’t expect every game to land on Steam quite yet.