Facebook teams up with Blizzard for streaming on Facebook Live

Facebook has teamed up with mega-popular gaming studio Blizzard to stream games via the Facebook Live platform, the two announced.

The partnership will first see Facebook Login being implemented for Blizzard’s titles such as World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Diablo III, StarCraft II, and Overwatch., allowing gamers to register and sign in with their Facebook accounts.

“Adding Facebook Login will pave the way for new social functionality in Blizzard games while highlighting Facebook’s capabilities as a platform for sharing, viewing, and discussing AAA game content. As an example, Blizzard is in the process of incorporating Facebook’s Live API in order to create its own ‘Go Live’ streaming functionality for its games. When this functionality is implemented, players will for the first time be able to livestream their Blizzard-gaming sessions directly to their Facebook timelines, and friends will be able to subscribe and be notified when new streams are available,” read an emailed press statement from Facebook.

“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.”

It makes for a rather interesting move on Blizzard’s part, as Facebook is clearly focusing on the social side of streaming in comparison to the likes of Twitch and YouTube Gaming. After all, Facebook has the audience numbers to potentially boost live-streams in a big way.

Does this point to a different future for live-streaming then, taking place on your timelines and news feeds rather than via a dedicated app? Or is Twitch here to stay?