Blizzard Has Terrible News For Some Gamers

Bad news for some of you Blizzard fans: the company has revealed that it will soon end support for some legacy Windows operating systems. This, importantly, means that you won't be able to play any of Blizzard's more recent games if you're still using one of these OSes. It is worth pointing out, however, that the best Blizzard gave ever made – Diablo II – will still run just fine.

So, which legacy Windows OSes are losing support? It probably won't surprise many to learn that Windows XP and Windows Vista are in the crosshairs here. Once Blizzard implements this change, newer titles like World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, and Diablo III will no longer run on machines that use those operating systems.

This move was announced on the Blizzard forums by customer service representative Nate Valenta. He says that Blizzard will begin implementing these changes in October using a staggered schedule, which likely means that support will end on a per-game basis instead of all at once. More information will be shared as we draw closer to the date that these changes will be implemented, Valenta said.

Of course, there's a good chance that Blizzard die-hards have already upgraded to newer operating systems. Overwatch supports neither Vista nor XP and hasn't since launch. If you were running one of those and wanted to play Overwatch, then, you had two options: either buy the game on console or upgrade your operating system. We're guessing a lot of people picked the latter option.

It's not much of a shock to see Blizzard drop support for Windows XP and Vista here. After all, Microsoft ended support for XP in 2009 and Vista in 2012, so they've been officially unsupported for years now. Are you a Blizzard fan who's still running XP or Vista? If so, prepare yourself, because the purge begins in October.