Blizzard is dropping mandatory phone linking for Overwatch 2

Blizzard’s launch of Overwatch 2 has been problematic, to say the least. So much so that on Metacritic the player rating is currently only 1.3/10 (this is not yet Diablo Immortal with 0.3/10 but anyway). There are actually quite a few reasons for this, and one of them, although not the main one, was the mandatory linking of a phone number to an account. Moreover, it, like many other things in Overwatch 2, worked “not very well”: for example, there are numerous complaints from players that the system does not accept pre-paid numbers, only contract numbers, and even among them there are refusals – in the case that in the past the contract number was prepaid.

Well, at least Blizzard is finally fixing this problem: according to an update news in official blog, the company is waiving the mandatory linking of a phone number for players who launched the first Overwatch after June 9, 2021 and have a linked Battle.net account. It was previously expected as early as today, October 7 — Blizzard promised to announce separately when the changes will take effect.