Although was one of the big novelties of Overwatch 2 in the communication of Blizzard on this new opus, SMS Protect has not been talked about for the right reasons. Indeed, during the catastrophic launch of the new edition of its arena FPS, the bugs piled up and the queues grew on the barely-there servers. In its listing of the many problems of the launch, the studio notably raised the point of the SMS account protection system.
ICYMI: Blizzard will remove its controversial SMS Protect system from Overwatch 2 for players who have played OW1
New players still have to play with their phone number
Blizzard is also trying to fix the servers & is aware of the current issueshttps://t.co/SJKpiKvvCn pic.twitter.com/OySUYeYnqB
—Nibel (@Nibellion) October 6, 2022
This Thursday, Blizzard came up with a drastic solution: the system is removed. In the face of worries, the protective measure is simply canceled, at least for players who have already played Overwatch 1.
UPDATE: We designed Overwatch 2 to be a live-service game, which allows us to respond to a variety of player feedback. We’ve 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 be required to provide a phone number to play. We are working on implementing this change and expect it to be effective on Friday, October 7th. We will notify players as soon as it is in effect.
We remain committed to addressing disruptive behavior in Overwatch 2 – accounts that were not logged into Battle.net as well as new accounts will still need to meet SMS Protect requirements, allowing us to protect our community from cheating. . If a player is caught in the act of disruptive behavior, their account may be banned, whether it is a new account or not.
A quick and effective reaction from the brand which wanted, with this system, strengthen protection against hackers and player toxicitybut who didn’t want to disappoint his oldest fans by not reacting.
What was the main problem with SMS Protect?
The game, now free-to-play, could accommodate anyone in its community, requesting verification by SMS on a player’s phone number. However, authentication did not work with prepaid plans, which is very often used in North America. On the networks, some players raged against the fact that you had to “be rich” (ie, not have a cheaper prepaid plan in the USA) to play a free game…