Do not implement 2fa

General Discussion
1

I have made one post about this and your technical team needs to know that 2 Factor authentication is UNETHICAL and Disenfranchises players.

I am an Equal Opportunity Gaming advocate. and that everyone deserves equal rights to play a game regardless of their Financial status. They pay for the title. They should be allowed access to it.

With 2FA you disenfranchise a group of players that is fairly large.

1 ) I cannot begin to stress that the technical aspect of this means that players in rural communities such as myself will be ultimately “deleted” from the game. We do NOT have consistent and RELIABLE cell towers in our area. If you pull up any network map in the United States, you will SEE that there is a good portion of the U.S. that has NO mobile coverage and barely has up-to-date bandwith. I ONLY clock in at 100mb/s DOWN on good days and the two cell towers near me are obsolete, faulty and have been rarely serviced in the past 3-5 YEARS.

2 ) It disenfranchises people that cannot afford to pay their mobile phones on time. and so they lose their numbers. Which means accounts LOST.

3 ) Cell phones are not “Tank proof”. They get LOST , stolen or broke.

Ultimately 2FA does not strengthen the outreach of the Overwatch Franchise AT ALL. Just look at CYBER cafe’s. Thats a big deal! That is a market you delete!

If you are trying to make money (which you should be! ) I have said this time and time again.

i ) I To Stop smurffs ASK FOR a “seasonal pay pass” to play Competitive Overwatch.

  • or at the very least. Ask for 100 hours to be logged on the account of total PLAYTIME.

ii ) Sell Cosmetics. .25 cents and 1 dollar cosmetics. People eat that stuff up!

iii ) Sell merchandise!

you know. Where the real money from the movie is made - Yogurt

iv ) Give the fans what they really asked for. MERCY stuff.

Just please. Don’t go down this road. Its just not right, and in all fairness the two best security practices of an account is a USERNAME (a handle) and a password. At the very least, I mean a person should at least be able to turn a notification on their phone to receive a text message if their account is logged into (optional).

I mean if your tech team thought they had it bad now… after this… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

If there is one thing I am begging you NOT to do. it is NOT implementing 2Fa.

Thank you. Respectfully.

3 Likes
2

Developers won’t see this feedback because this is the troubleshooting area. Post in #general-discussion instead.

1 Like
3

Even if they did they probably wouldn’t care or have the resources to change anything because the problemed group is too small and doesn’t justify the revenue that would be gained. Sucks, but development lately only cares about economic wins and not community wins.

1 Like
4

They’re not implementing 2FA, they don’t need your phone number to do that. They want DATA.

I wish it was 2FA.

1 Like
5

  1. You don’t need constant connection for a 2fa. Getting a code grant is not tanking the connection and depending on their implementation you don’t need to do it that often probably. Google mail as a 2fa with code grant and I only get a code if I log on a new device. That being said: You should NOT need a consistent and RELIABLE cell tower in your area for 2fa to work.

  2. I have a 2€ per month mobile phone contract because I’m a loser sitting at home all the time and don’t benefit from having a lot of mobile data available. I have another phone number as a prepaid SIM card and the last time I charged it with money was almost 2 years ago and I still have the phone number. Those contracts or prepaid SIM numbers exist in almost every country. If you can’t afford this you have bigger problems.
    Furthermore losing the phone number does not necessarily mean you lose the account. It really depends on the authorization flow implementation. I think you could get your account back via E-Mail verification from a trusted device ( a device that had a successful 2fa ). 2fa is really handy when a login occurs on a new device.

  3. yea this point is close to losing your number from point 2.

Cyber cafe’s won’t get deleted. You need your phone to verify the login though.

Blizzards attempt to stop smurfing and alt accounts is not to bad with this approach. I personally have two numbers which limits me to have 2 accounts. For any further accounts I need another phone Number or find some shady service that acts like a service provider. Ultimately this will reduce the alt and smurf accounts drastically since now it needs more effort to create a smurf or alt account.

They are not trying to make money with 2fa (at least not directly). I don’t even know why you think that makes them any money. They basically lose money because now there is no reason to buy multiple accounts. This is an attempt to curb stomp smurfing and alt accounts when overwatch 2 hits so new players won’t instantly get a bad taste in their mouth when they get overwatch 2, start the competetive queue and play against master and grandmasters that want to have fun in platin/diamond. Blizzard obviously thinks this would lose them more money than keeping alt and smurf accounts which was for a long time a valuable source of income for them. Keeping the current system however would drive especially new players away from the game

OPs opinion and insight on the 2fa seems naive and uninformed to me, which I don’t understand since 2fa is virtually everywhere.

2 Likes
6

This. 2FA already exists in the form of mobile apps and in some rare cases, physical tokens.

1 Like
7

2FA with a mobile device is more secure since you can send a code grant via SMS. This is another protocol that is not running on the same wire.

That being said security is not their concern. I highly doubt that that many accounts got stolen that would warrant 2FA with a valid phone number.
It is however a great way to limit a persons number of accounts.
Making 2FA with an app would open up the possibility of multiple accounts again.

1 Like
8

It also makes account sharing/selling more difficult, depending on how it’s implemented. I actually suspect this is the main reason for it. I imagine accounts with filled out passes are attractive targets for hackers and sellers.

9

sharing will be not that big of a problem since you just need to ask your friend for the code. Selling on the other hand could become harder.

In fact it already got harder. Friend of mine bought himself 3 used accounts and they all got banned.

If you want to smurf nowadays its seems like you need to have a fresh account.

10

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.