Overwatch 2 and Other Blizzard Games Coming to Steam, Battle.net Account Still Required

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

The EU has found that Microsoft and Activision combined could have a dominant position in PC gaming after their merger deal is finalized.

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.

Keeping track of all the latest video games coming out is an increasingly complex task, what with multiple PC storefronts, Xbox One, PS4, Switch, mobile, and more to keep track of, but don’t worry, I’m here to help. Every month I'll be running down the games you need to be keeping an eye on, from the AAA headliners to the indies you might otherwise overlook.

Blizzard Entertainment's newest update for Diablo IV has added an extra barrier to buying its premium battle pass. The change comes following recent controversy around the ease of buying said pass for the RPG's first in-game season. 

It wasn’t terribly shocking when Netflix announced it would be adding games to its platform. Instead, the news was treated with a mild disinterest. “Games” on the platform at that point were the “choose your own adventure” style interactive TV shows like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Carmen Sandiego: To Steal or Not to Steal. Though Bandersnatch had a hot moment, buzz for the “game” didn’t last terribly long. Then, when actual games first started rolling out on the platform, they were little more than inconsequential time fillers with names like Shooty Hoops.

Microsoft has announced the Games with Gold lineup for August 2023, the final set of games to launch under the Games With Gold banner before the promotion comes to an end in September.

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.

Kotick discussed the deal in a recent interview.

The US Federal Trade Commission has withdrawn its proceedings against Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. According to IGN, the FTC responded to Microsoft’s motion to withdraw from the recent proceedings with no objections, essentially giving Microsoft the green light to go ahead with its $69 billion acquisition.

As reported in The Verge, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suspending its administrative challenge to Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. This comes after the FTC's request for emergency relief was denied in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and not long after a motion Microsoft and Activision Blizzard filed earlier to get the FTC from trying to block their proposed merger.