The game developers and team at Blizzard Entertainment have teamed up with Facebook to integrate more social and secure features in their games.
After over 7-million players purchased Overwatch in the first week of release, Blizzard has run into some issues with cheaters, anonymous accounts, and spam accounts. While the game is still very playable, some console and especially PC owners have reported many cases of cheating, bullying, and harassment. To help mitigate that, the developers are taking more steps to improve security, connect friends, and stream games like Overwatch directly to your Facebook account.
It’s now exciting that Facebook Login and Facebook Live are now a part of Battle.net… We’ve worked on it for many months,” Olebe said. “The most important thing was to build something that is incredible for people, and Blizzard is always amazing at that. They had to really get behind this. – Leo Olebe, Global Games Partnerships Director – Facebook
The two announced their partnership on Monday, after testing the waters on how it might all work back in May. Blizzard had their Heroes of the Dorm 2016 tournament on Facebook Live and also streamed launch events for Overwatch over the last two weeks. With great response and a reported high level of viewerships, it seemed as though the “testing” went quite well.
Through the deal, Battle.net players will be able to now directly login to their favorite Blizzard game through their Facebook login. So far the reports and announcement have said this integration will be live very soon, while the streaming and Facebook Live support will come in about a month (with no confirmed date at the moment).
We’re working closely with Facebook on this integration for Overwatch, as well as our other games, and we look forward to sharing further details on our plans as development progresses. – Gio Hunt, Executive VP of Corporate Operations – Blizzard Entertainment
It appears as though the massive launch success of Overwatch has really pushed Blizzard to get this Facebook integration going. The deal has been in the works for a while, but with larger patches and updates coming to the game this summer, connecting and streaming to the world’s largest social media network will be a huge step.
There is obvious competition in the streaming market with giants like Twitch and YouTube out there. Blizzard hopes that the popularity of their competitive games like Heroes of the Storm, HearthStone, and Overwatch will help keep fans’ eyes on Battle.net prize as they grow their games competitively and even casually with the helping hand of Facebook.
