Earlier this year, Blizzard renamed its venerable Battle.net client to the Blizzard App, or maybe the Blizzard Launcher—I was never entirely clear on which it was supposed to be—in order to reflect its growth into a more well-rounded, Steam-like piece of software. The trouble is that Battle.net is a really good name with a lot of history behind it, and so the change never really took. Even Blizzard opted to call it Battle.net when Destiny 2 was revealed. Given all that, it's not really surprising that Blizzard has thrown in the towel on the whole thing.
"When we announced that we’d be transitioning away from the Battle.net name for our online-gaming service, we suspected that the shift would be challenging. We understood that Battle.net stood for something special—it represents years of shared history and enjoyment, community and friendship, for all of us and our players," Blizzard wrote in the re-renaming announcement.
"Battle.net is the central nervous system for Blizzard games and the connective tissue that has brought Blizzard players together since 1996. The technology was never going away, but after giving the branding change further consideration and also hearing your feedback, we’re in agreement that the name should stay as well. Take it from the developer formerly known as Silicon & Synapse, and Chaos Studios, names are important too."
The new/old name will be a slightly modified take on the original, going from Battle.net to Blizzard Battle.net, reflected in the new logo "and in general when we refer to it in print." Naturally, the rest of us will just keep calling it Battle.net. And all's well that ends well.
