But only for owners of Overwatch 1.
So, chances are good that you haven’t actually played Overwatch 2 yet… even if you wanted to. But if you did download it and start it up, you ran into one major pain in the ass; they want a phone number. And, even assuming you were willing to put one there, if you have a prepaid option, like Cricket Wireless, you found that they wouldn’t accept it.
Well, there’s not necessarily a solution for those stuck in prepaid land… yet. But the good news is that if you were an existing Overwatch player before the “sequel” went live, they’re waived the requirement “for a majority of existing Overwatch players“.
We designed Overwatch 2 to be a live service, which enables us to be responsive to a variety of player feedback. We have made the decision to remove phone number requirements for a majority of existing Overwatch players. Any Overwatch player with a connected Battle.net account, which includes all players who have played since June 9, 2021, will not have to provide a phone number to play. We are working to make this change and expect it to go live on Friday, October 7. We will update players once it is in effect.
We remain committed to combating disruptive behavior in Overwatch 2—accounts that were not connected to Battle.net as well as new accounts will still have to meet SMS Protect requirements, which helps to ensure we’re protecting our community against cheating. If a player is caught engaging in disruptive behavior, their account may be banned whether they have a new account or not.
As a team, we will keep listening to ongoing feedback and will make further adjustments in this area if it is required.
The SMS requirement is meant to combat a number of things that made the first game an infuriating experience, like smurfing, abuse of the chat feature, cheating, and actually enforcing bans. It’s hard to imagine that it will help all that much for the whole chat thing, but the others are nice, I guess.
It’s also unlikely that they’ll drop the post-paid phone plan requirements for the rest of the potential playerbase. Mostly due to the fact that prepaid plans tend to be favored due to their inexpense; this barrier they’ve set up against “disruptive behavior” when someone can get around a ban by going out and spending ~$20 to get a fresh phone number. Which makes you wonder why they bothered at all; it’s just strangling whatever goodwill they could have earned in the first place.
If I’m being honest, the first game taught me that there’s little one person can do against a group of highly coordinated assholes (especially if the rest of your group seemingly has an IQ equivalent to Brick Tamland). If Blizzard takes the place of the one, then the group is everybody that wants to pull shenanigans.
On the plus side of all of this, at least the DDoS attacks that plagued Overwatch 2 on opening day are apparently over with. So you can actually have a chance to play the game now… assuming you are either an Overwatch 1 player or have a post-paid phone plan.
Source: PC Gamer
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