Blizzard has confirmed that the Battle.net platform will continue to introduce third-party games in the future, but it will not engage in direct competition with Steam or the Epic Games Store. The platform will continue to adopt a more focused strategy, selecting only titles that Blizzard believes are suitable for its existing player base.
CD Projekt Red announced at BlizzCon that the remastered version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 will launch on the Battle.net platform before the end of this year. With these two titles joining, attention has turned to whether the platform will further expand its lineup of third-party games.
Andrew Guerrero of Blizzard stated that the company has no intention of operating Battle.net as a platform like Steam or the Epic Games Store. Blizzard has a core user base that primarily plays its own titles and similar genres, and the company will only push for a game to launch on Battle.net if it aligns with these players' interests.
Regarding selection criteria, Blizzard considers which high-quality titles might appeal to its platform users and whether introducing them makes sense. Guerrero stated that if the platform's scope expands too broadly, the game selection process itself would become overly complex, which is not the direction Battle.net wishes to take.
The Battle.net platform was originally launched in 1997 alongside Diablo, initially providing features such as player chat and multiplayer server lists. It gradually evolved into a purchase and launch platform for Blizzard's PC games. In 2017, Destiny 2 arrived on the service, followed by Activision-published series such as Call of Duty and Crash Bandicoot.
Following Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, titles from Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda, such as Avowed, Sea of Thieves, The Outer Worlds 2, and DOOM: The Dark Ages, have also joined the Battle.net platform, further expanding its library.
Guerrero also stated that the Battle.net platform was not originally designed for publishing third-party games. Blizzard has adjusted related processes so that integrating new games no longer requires fully customized solutions for each title, but the platform is not expected to offer an open mechanism where developers can simply press a button for self-publishing. At this stage, Battle.net will continue to use manual curation to decide which titles to introduce next.