Facebook convinces Blizzard to get on the Facebook Live bandwagon

Makers of such seminal titles as World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft and now, Overwatch, Blizzard is a game developer that needs no introduction. Blizzard’s following is very dedicated, especially in countries like Korea, and since their games lend themselves very well to livestreaming, that’s what gamers do.Traditionally, gamers stuck to YouTube and Twitch, the former for casting replays and the latter for livestreaming. Now, however, Blizzard is working on integrating Facebook’s Live API into their games. They’re also allowing for Facebook logins and all this will be packaged as “Go Live.”With the update, players will be able to livestream directly to Facebook and Blizzard says that friends will be able to subscribe directly.“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 had, earlier, livestreamed the launch of Overwatch on Facebook Live. They’re also working with Facebook and Instagram to generate and share targeted ads and dip into the pool of prospective gamers on Facebook. With Facebook’s and Instagram’s combined user base of almost 2 billion, that’s quite a large pool to dip into.