Overwatch 1 Players No Longer Needs a Postpaid Number To Play Overwatch 2
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Blizzard announced that they are lifting the phone number requirement for a majority of their Overwatch 1 player base that are trying to play Overwatch 2, as some players are finding issues with entering their phone number, specifically those with prepaid plans in their respective region.
The SMS protect requirement change will take effect on Friday, October 7. Here’s what Blizzard has to say regarding the change:
“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.”
New players joining Overwatch 2 with a fresh account though are not affected by this change. You’ll still need to provide a phone number (postpaid) when creating a new account.
With Overwatch 2 now live and free-to-play, Blizzard added the requirement of attaching a phone number to your Battle.net account before playing the game. This is to avoid users making multiple accounts, and to make it even harder, a postpaid number is required.
The issue here is not everyone has a postpaid number, and this is preventing Overwatch 1 players from making their Battle.net accounts eligible for Overwatch 2. We’ve experienced this roadblock ourselves as Blizzard’s system can definitely tell if you’re attaching a postpaid or prepaid number to your account.
Hopefully this makes things easier for some players, but this isn’t the only issue plaguing the game since the game launched yesterday as server outages, DDoS attacks, and long queues to get into the game on various platforms have been reported. There are also account merging issues and purchasing issues, all mentioned and addressed in an official post in their forums.
The multiplayer of Overwatch 2 is now live on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. It replaced Overwatch 1 and Blizzard has converted all existing player accounts to the new game and has given players from different platforms the option to merge their accounts into one battle.net account, and doing so will allow players to play on the same account in different platforms.
[Source: Blizzard forums]
