Blizzard has added CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 Remastered to Battle.net, with a company executive confirming the publisher is not attempting to position the launcher as an open competitor to Valve's Steam or Epic's PC storefront.

A Blizzard executive told GamesRadar+ that the publisher is not "trying to do the Steam or Epic Games Store thing" with the additions. The remark reframes Battle.net's third-party ambitions as a curated extension of the catalog rather than a competitive PC distribution play, and sets up a public framework for how partner titles will be onboarded going forward.

What actually changed on Battle.net?

Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 Remastered join a Battle.net library that, until Microsoft's October 2023 close of its $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard King acquisition, was almost entirely limited to first-party Blizzard and Activision releases.

Cyberpunk 2077 launched in December 2020 to a rocky reception before CD Projekt Red restored player trust through sustained patches. The Witcher 3 was originally released by CD Projekt Red in 2015 and received a dedicated next-generation update in late 2022. Both titles remain available on Steam, GOG, and PlayStation and Xbox storefronts.

The Cyberpunk 2077 listing represents one of the highest-profile third-party franchises to land on the launcher outside Microsoft-Activision's existing pipeline. Crash Bandicoot 4 and several Call of Duty titles had already joined the catalog during the acquisition process, but a marquee external release of this scale is a first for the platform.

Why draw a line against Steam-style strategy?

The framing carries commercial weight. Steam operates an open marketplace with tiered revenue-share terms, and Epic Games Store has used selective exclusivity arrangements and reduced developer fees to draw publishers off Valve's platform.

Positioned against those models, Battle.net's stated curated approach behaves more like an OEM launcher: distributing specific titles by agreement rather than competing for catalog migration at scale.

That posture also tracks with how Microsoft has historically handled first-party distribution across its gaming properties. Game Pass on PC delivers Microsoft and partner titles through a subscription layer rather than a transactional marketplace, and the curated framing on Battle.net mirrors a broader preference for controlled release windows and licensing-based inclusion.

What does the move change for studios?

For CD Projekt Red, the Battle.net listings add a third major PC sales channel alongside Steam and GOG. The studio has not disclosed revenue terms, length of exclusivity, or windowing arrangements for the new listings.

The absence of a self-service publishing path suggests each title required a direct agreement between CDPR and Blizzard, a model that limits onboarding throughput but preserves pricing control for both parties.

For other third-party developers and publishers, the practical question is whether Battle.net will accept individual titles through similar licensing arrangements or eventually open a broader submission pipeline that resembles Steamworks or the Epic Games Store onboarding flow. The exec's comments point toward the former, though no formal onboarding system has been announced.

Smaller studios without the negotiating leverage of CD Projekt Red will watch the next wave of titles closely to see whether the curated path extends beyond marquee releases or remains gated behind direct publisher agreements.

What to watch next

Battle.net's third-party catalog remains narrow and so far franchise-driven. Any announcement of a self-publishing tier, broader revenue-share structure, or systematic onboarding for independent studios would mark a clear reversal of the position the Blizzard executive laid out.

Watch the launcher's storefront additions and Microsoft's quarterly remarks on PC distribution as the most direct signals of a strategy shift.