Yesterday, Treyarch and Activision officially announced Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. The two companies confirmed that the game would be released in October on PC and consoles and that a more significant reveal event will take place in May. Unfortunately, though, few other details about the game or its release plans were confirmed, leaving it up to fans to continue speculating.

The latest piece of fan speculation doing the rounds is that the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will be hosted through Battlenet, which is the PC client created by (Overwatch and Hearthstone developer) Blizzard Entertainment. The Call of Duty Profile account management site appears to have been updated and the list of services that users can connect their profile to now includes Blizzard's Battlenet alongside the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and Steam. The change to the account management section was made alongside the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 announcement.

While Battlenet is host to Blizzard's games, last year it did introduce a non-Blizzard game for the first time when Destiny 2 was released. At the time, it was explained that creating a new network client for Destiny 2 PC would have taken too much time and that it made more sense to bring the game to Battlenet instead. But the same reasoning could not be used with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 given that PC versions of the game have traditionally been released through Steam (hence why users can connect their profiles to their Steam accounts).

Call of Duty Black Ops 4 Battle.net account website

Many PC players will remember the controversy when Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was released on both Windows Store and Steam. The Windows Store and Steam versions were incompatible meaning Windows Store patrons rarely found full matches, essentially rendering the game's online unplayable. The issue was prevalent enough that unhappy player was able to secure a refund.

Given that Call of Duty's PC player base is already established on Steam, a decision to make the game Battlenet exclusive or to offer the game on both Steam and Battlenet (thus fragmenting the player base) is likely to cause controversy. The use of Battlenet does have some benefits for Activision - it would be much easier to market to players and possibly get them interested in other Activision-published games - but longstanding PC players are unlikely to see the situation like that. An official announcement on the matter has yet to be made, but PC players would advise the publisher to tread carefully.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will be released on October 12 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: Charlie Intel