Blizzard Entertainment has announced that World Of Warcraft‘s Twitter integration is being removed from the MMO, days after Twitter owner Elon Musk announced plans to put the site’s API behind a paywall.
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“Over the next two days, we will update World Of Warcraft to remove the integrated Twitter posting feature,” Blizzard announced in a forum post yesterday (February 8). “After this small update, the function to Tweet from in-game will no longer be available, and the settings which store your Twitter credentials will no longer appear.”
“This will not require any action by players,” Blizzard added.
The timing of Blizzard’s announcement lines up with Twitter’s plans to paywall its Application Programming Interface (API), which allows third-parties access Twitter without having to go through the website’s front-facing interface.
From today (February 9), accessing Twitter’s API will cost £82 ($100) at a basic level. However, depending on its usage, buyers can pay up to £2059 ($2500) per month for 10,000 total requests. A more “advanced” Enterprise package is also available and although pricing is not publicly available, it’s likely to be even more expensive.
Given the timing, it’s likely that World Of Warcraft‘s Twitter functionality has been removed to avoid Blizzard paying Twitter’s API fees. Plans to introduce a paywall have been met with criticism from those who run automated accounts on the site, which rely on API access to run.
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In response, Elon Musk partially backtracked on the plans by announcing “Twitter will enable a light, write-only API for bots providing good content that is free.”
However, others will still need to pay to access Twitter’s API.
As for World Of Warcraft, last month the MMO made headlines when Blizzard reportedly fired the lead for its Classic spin-off for protesting the company’s employee evaluation policy.