Can't tweet that anymore.
By the end of this week, Blizzard will be removing Twitter integration from World of Warcraft. On the game's forum, a community manager confirmed that "the function to Tweet from in-game will no longer be available, and the settings which store your Twitter credentials will no longer appear."
The removal of Twitter integration from the MMO comes as Twitter is making changes to its Application Program Interface (API). Starting February 9, third-party developers will have to pay a basic tier to access API functions that were previously free.
If you've used a third-party Twitter app, which video games technically are, Twitter's API is what allows them to function. For games, that API lets videos and photos be uploaded directly from a console, something that consoles from the last two generations have actively touted as features for their controllers.
Charging money for API access is part of Twitter CEO Elon Musk's efforts to make money out of his $44 billion acquisition, and he previously said it was another way of cracking down on the platform's bot problem. Some bot accounts, most of them humorous or informative, use Twitter's API to function.
After criticism from developers and Twitter users that use those third-party apps, Musk clarified that bots that made "good content" would be allowed free access to the API.
With how prevalent social media can play into a game's lifecycle, and how consoles and games have made that Twitter integration so easy, this API change may have larger ramifications for how Twitter and games intersect.
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