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‘Overwatch 2’ Will Leave Some Players Behind After All - Forbes

Cast your mind back 35 months, a whole pandemic ago, to BlizzCon 2019. That was when Blizzard officially announced Overwatch 2.

Then-game director Jeff Kaplan tried to assure fans that the transition to the sequel would be a smooth one. He said Overwatch 1 and Overwatch 2 players would be part of “a shared multiplayer environment where no one gets left behind.” As it turns out, Blizzard is shutting down Overwatch 1 today. It will move everyone over to the sequel tomorrow.

Well, not everyone. Some players are getting left behind after all.

Blizzard is requiring all players to link a valid mobile phone number to their Battle.net account to play Overwatch 2. “The key idea behind SMS Protect is to have an investment on behalf of the owner of that account and add some limitations or restrictions behind how you might have an account,” Overwatch 2 lead software engineer Bill Warnecke told me last week. “There's no exclusions or loopholes around the system.”

That’s proving to be a big problem for some folks. Several players have claimed that Blizzard’s system isn’t accepting their phone numbers. The company said prepaid and VOIP numbers won’t be valid. MetroPCS and Cricket Wireless numbers don’t seem to be working either. I’m expecting to hear more from Blizzard about this issue soon.

Last night, I was playing a final few rounds of 6v6 Mystery Heroes. When I asked everyone in one game if they were looking forward to Overwatch 2, one said they wouldn’t be moving over. They said they didn’t have a phone. While this is completely anecdotal, it’s another example of the kind of player who may not have access to Overwatch 2.

Elsewhere, some PC players might be left out. Unlike the original game, Overwatch 2 will not run on Windows 7 or 8. It has modest system requirements by modern gaming standards, but they’re slightly more demanding than in Overwatch 1. As such, some folks who enjoy Overwatch 1 might not have a rig that's powerful enough to run Overwatch 2.

While I’m broadly on board with the measures Blizzard is taking to minimize the likelihood of cheaters and toxic players pervading the game (it’ll be harder to sign up for a new account if they get banned), it’s a pity that the SMS Protect requirement is leaving some players behind. It actually seems to be making the game less accessible, which runs counter to one of Overwatch’s core tenets of inclusivity.

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October 03, 2022 at 05:00PM
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‘Overwatch 2’ Will Leave Some Players Behind After All - Forbes
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