Blizzard had plans to dump the launcher shortly after D3 2.0 dropped. Then they backpedaled and where like no wait launcher is great! 🤷‍♂️

I’m not sure why that’d be surprising, it’s not like they’re going to instantly transfer all of battlenet over to steam along with all those players, and they definitely wouldn’t be the first game with another account, extra launcher or not.

I don’t have any bliz games installed right now to check what the state is currently, but it used to be the case (definitely up to SC2/D3) that the initial releases were standalone clients, if you launched them directly they’d present you with a log in screen and I think that might still be the case, including things like 2 factor. Then it’s launch it and type your username/password.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been PC gaming for long enough that I remember when every online game under the sun had its own login that I’m really not bothered by things like this. I do find it amusing how there’s people really enthusiastic about PC and hating consoles with MS/Sony lock-in, that seem to want a console-like experience with every developer under the Valve hegemony. I get wanting simplicity, but there’s also putting all your eggs in one basket.