Activision Blizzard Inc. said Monday it will soon add Facebook Inc. login and live-streaming features to some of its competitive PC games, the company's latest effort to capitalize on growing mainstream interest in so-called e-sports.

The new login integration with Facebook will make it possible for Activision Blizzard customers to tell if their Facebook friends are also users of Battle.net, the online gaming platform of its Blizzard unit, and initiate games. The added functionality is a way for the company to entice more customers to spend time in its games, which can lead to increased monetization.

Previously, Battlet.net users couldn't tell which of their Facebook friends might also be on the platform.

Logging in through Facebook is a relatively new feature in PC gaming. "League of Legends," a popular e-sports title from Tencent Holding Inc.'s Riot Games added the option last year.

For Activision Blizzard, the move could give its Blizzard PC games—many of which are popular on the competitive-gaming circuit—wider exposure on the world's biggest social-media network. That's key as the company has recently been investing heavily in e-sports. For example, late last year it bought e-sports broadcaster Major League Gaming and hired executives with NFL Network and ESPN experience to run a new e-sports division.

"It's important to us to provide our players with features and services that make it easy and fun to share their experiences with each other," Gio Hunt, a Blizzard executive, said in a statement.

In e-sports, top digital athletes compete in tournaments across the globe for millions of dollars in prize money. Many fans of the fast-growing niche, which draws thousands of spectators to arenas and millions more online, are devoted players of the same games.

Another way Activision Blizzard is looking to raise its profile in e-sports through Facebook is by soon allowing its Blizzard PC customers to live-stream gaming sessions on the social network. Activision Blizzard will be among the few companies to first do this, though Facebook only recently introduced its livestreaming product, known as Facebook Live, in April.

The announcement of the new features comes shortly after Activision Blizzard said in May it will start publishing live e-sports broadcasts to Facebook daily in a format similar to ESPN's "SportsCenter" later this month.

For its part, Facebook has been ramping up efforts to compete against rivals such as Amazon Inc.'s Twitch and Alphabet Inc.'s YouTube. It has started promoting live video in its news feed and, in some cases, paid content creators to produce live video. In early April, it announced plans to create a dedicated "live video" button within its mobile app.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 06, 2016 17:15 ET (21:15 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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