How to delete your Battle.net account permanently
By Otabek Mamadaliev · Sources last reviewed · What this means
How do I delete my Battle.net account?
Use Blizzard’s self-service deletion request — Customer Support cannot do it for you. It takes up to 30 days, you can cancel within 5 days of submitting, and every game, character and Battle.net Balance on the account is lost.
Every game, character and cosmetic goes. Blizzard lists what is permanently lost: purchase history, purchased games, codes, promotions and in-game items, game accounts and all game progress, your correspondence with Customer Support, and any remaining Battle.net Balance. For an account a decade old this is one of the most destructive deletions available.
Do this instead, probably
- Remove your payment method — stops charges, keeps the library.
- Cancel the WoW subscription — that alone ends the recurring cost.
- Set the account to appear offline if the concern is other players contacting you.
It is self-service — do not open a ticket
Blizzard states plainly that Customer Support is unable to manually delete Battle.net accounts. There is a request link on the deletion article and that is the only route. Raising a ticket will not get it done.
- Spend or write off your Battle.net Balance — it is destroyed, not refunded.
- Cancel subscriptions so you are not billed during the wait.
- Open Blizzard's deletion article and use its request link.
- Complete the erasure request.
Blizzard removes your name, contact information, security details and saved payment methods. Requests take up to 30 days, and once complete Blizzard cannot recover the information or restore the account under any circumstances.
You have five days to change your mind
Blizzard says it tries to honour a cancellation made within five days of your original submission. It also warns that misusing the deletion feature can make the cancellation itself irreversible — so this is a genuine escape hatch, not something to test.
Three things people miss
- Unlinked game accounts are not included. The request covers the Battle.net account making it and the games attached to it. A game account you never linked survives.
- Activision is separate. Deleting Battle.net removes access to your Activision games on Battle.net but does not delete your linked Activision account or its game data. That is a second, separate request.
- The phone number is burned. Numbers previously used with Overwatch and Call of Duty accounts stay ineligible for re-use on new accounts even after deletion completes. If your plan was to delete and start fresh on the same number, it will not work.
What happens to your World of Warcraft characters
For a long-running WoW account this is the real cost, and it is worth being concrete about. Characters are attached to the game account, which is attached to the Battle.net account you are deleting. All of it goes together — levels, gear, achievements, mounts, collections, gold, and the names themselves.
- Character names are released. A name you have held since 2007 becomes available for anyone on that realm to take.
- Guild leadership is orphaned. If you are the guild master, hand it over before you go — otherwise you leave a guild without an owner and members without recourse.
- There is no character transfer to another account as a way out. A paid transfer moves a character between accounts you own, which means it has to happen before deletion, not as part of it.
A lapsed subscription is not the same as a deleted account. If the goal is simply to stop paying, cancel the subscription and stop. Characters survive indefinitely on an unsubscribed account, and people return to them years later. Deletion is the only route that destroys them.
Battle.net Balance is money you will not see again
Blizzard names remaining Battle.net Balance among what is permanently lost, and it is not refunded to a card. Balance frequently accumulates without anyone noticing — gift card remainders, promotional credit, WoW Token proceeds, refunds that were returned as credit rather than to the original payment method.
Check it before you submit the request, and spend it on something rather than donating it back to Blizzard by inaction. It is the one part of this deletion where a few minutes of attention has a directly measurable value.
The same applies to any unredeemed codes sitting in your email. A code redeemed to a deleted account is spent; a code never redeemed is still a code, but it can only be redeemed to an account, so it is worth deciding what you want to do with it while you still have one.
Common questions
Can Blizzard support delete my account for me?
No. Blizzard states Customer Support is unable to manually delete Battle.net accounts — you have to use the self-service erasure request on its deletion article.
Can I cancel a Battle.net deletion request?
Blizzard tries to honour cancellations made within five days of submitting. After that, or if the feature has been misused, it is permanent.
Can I reuse my phone number on a new Blizzard account?
Not if it was previously attached to an Overwatch or Call of Duty account. Blizzard says those numbers stay ineligible for new accounts even after deletion finishes.