Blizzard Entertainment and Facebook have announced a new partnership that will allow users to login to games using their Facebook accounts later this month. This applies to all Blizzard titles including, World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, and Overwatch.
The deal will also see Blizzard integrate Facebook’s Live API into its games; allowing players to stream gameplay directly to their Facebook pages. What this essentially means is that people should be prepared to see a whole lot more Overwatch appearing on their news feeds.
“Blizzard games are best when played with friends, so it’s important to us to provide our players with features and services that make it easy and fun to share their experiences with each other,” said Gio Hunt, executive vice president of corporate operations at Blizzard Entertainment. “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.”
Blizzard and Facebook are not strangers when it comes to gaming. The two had previously worked on stream the Heroes of the Dorm tournament; which was also streamed over Facebook.
Facebook has been expanding the amount of content available as of late. The social media giant recently expanded to allowing users to live stream events though Facebook Live; a move that has seen more videos appearing on the site.
This latest move may put it directly in competition with other streaming services like Twitch.tv and YouTube Gaming. Game streaming has become a massive business for content providers, and it looks like Facebook wants a piece of the pie. Whether it will be able to convince streamers to switch to this new platform is another story.
