Overwatch 2 and other Blizzard games are heading to Steam

Blizzard has announced that its free-to-play multiplayer hero shooter Overwatch 2 is heading to Steam. This comes after around 10 months of Battle.net exclusivity, and the first step in Blizzard joining EA in de-emphasising their proprietary PC storefronts and placing their games on Steam.

“As Blizzard evolves as a studio, inside and out, one of the ideas pushing us forward is meeting players around the world where they are and making our games as easy as possible to access and play,” Blizzard Entertainment writes on its website. “We want to give everyone a chance to experience our universes with old friends while making new ones, no matter how they choose to play.” In order to expand their reach to these new audiences, the company is “bringing a selection of [its] games to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2.”

“It’s our goal at Blizzard to listen to players and try to exceed their expectations in everything we do,” said Mike Ybarra, President of Blizzard Entertainment. “While Battle.net remains a priority for us now and into the future, we’ve heard players want the choice of Steam for a selection of our games, starting with Overwatch 2 on August 10th. We’re happy to work with Valve to make that happen.”

“Gamers and developers are both going to benefit from Overwatch 2 coming to Steam,” said Gabe Newell, Valve’s president. “Gamers will have another platform where they can play a beloved game that utilizes the capabilities of Steam, and developers will benefit from the effects of having the talented team at Blizzard helping us evolve our supported features and functionality for Overwatch 2.”

This move to making its games available on Steam doesn’t mean Blizzard is done with Battle.net. PC players experiencing Overwatch 2 via Steam will still need to log into Battle.net in order to play online, as it is what facilitates the cross-play multiplayer. It can be expected that Blizzard will probably take a similar approach to any other games it sells via Steam. This is not unlike EA requiring players to sign into their Origin account to play their games, regardless of which PC storefront you buy them on.

Overwatch 2, the first Blizzard title to be distributed via Steam, will be available on the 10th of August. Its Steam Store page is already up. As far as other Blizzard games go, the company has announced that they will “be sharing more about potential other games coming to the platform when the time is right.” It’s always good to have a game more widely available (and of course subject to Steam’s regular sales), so we will have to wait for more news on future Blizzard games, such as the recently-released Diablo 4, landing on the platform at some point.