Blizzard has canceled Overwatch 2’s phone number requirement amid a rocky launch

Blizzard’s launch Note and watch 2 Tuesday did not go as scheduled. Many players have tried to play the revamped Note and watch They faced long wait times, experienced server errors, disconnected games, progressed and items from the original game weren’t transferred – that is, if they could connect to Blizzard’s game servers at all. Wednesday evening, Blizzard apologized for the condition Monitor 2He announced a major policy change: It will no longer be Requires a phone number to be associated with a Battle.net account “For the majority of the existing Note and watch players. “

“We have made the decision to remove the phone number requirement for the majority of existing devices Note and watch players,” Team Overwatch said in a post on the Blizzard Forums. “Which Note and watch A 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.”

Blizzard said it plans to change the phone number requirements for Monitor 2 For existing players by Friday.

Despite raising the phone number requirement for most of its player base, An initiative called SMS Protectthe developer “keeps[s] Committed to combating disruptive behavior in Monitor 2He noted that “accounts that were not associated with Battle.net as well as new accounts will still have to meet SMS Protect requirements, which helps ensure our community is protected from fraud.” If a player is caught engaging in disruptive behavior, their account may be banned whether or not they have a new account.”

Blizzard’s decision to request a phone number for Monitor 2 – And more restrictions around any types From phone numbers meet their requirements – it was a matter of controversy. Some players with prepaid cell phone plans have found themselves banned from playing Monitor 2which means that some customers who bought the original Note and watch, replaced by the complementary sentence, can no longer run her version of the game. This problem was exacerbated by the timing of Blizzard’s announcement of the policy: one week ago Monitor 2 It was launched, and after the developer began to receive pre-orders for add-ons for the game.

As for the case of Monitor 2Blizzard said it is still working to improve the stability of the online game service.

“Today we patched an important server for the login experience, and this change has increased the reliability of the login,” the Overwatch team said. “Other than queues, we are continuing to update another server that will reduce players disconnection once they actually enter the game.”

Blizzard said it has “made changes to simplify the queue process,” expects players to see more simplified wait times, and is working to deal with players who are left out of queues.

In an update Wednesday night, Blizzard also addressed account merging issues, missing player items, and improperly locked heroes, all of which it said are being investigated and worked on. Blizzard noticed it again Monitor 2The launch problems were “aggravated by DDoS attacks,” which have apparently abated since Tuesday.

Blizzard said updates will be posted to the official Overwatch Twitter account (and presumably its forums) upon entry.