People really believe that phone number is a wall to stop smurfing? Lol so naive.
It’s just a marketing thing saying “look we’re finally doing something against smurfs!”
Wait a minute but they couldve done that years ago?!
We all know that main reason they did that is because now they have nothing to gain from smurfing in ow2 and not because integrity of the game. Is blizzard really think we’re stupid enough to believe that?
I see people saying “no more smurf in the game good riddance!” Are these guys live in a grotto? It’s a FREE 2 PLAY game and PHONE NUMBER can be easily retrieve nowadays
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Yeah I don’t know about in America but here in Europe it’s really easy to get multiple SIM cards
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Why are you so insistent on defending smurfing?
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Ring-0 AntiCheat also doesn’t stop hackers in Valorant either.
It’s not about stopping all hackers.
It’s about reducing their numbers, by putting more hurdles in their way.
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They haven’t used it in their marketing even once though…? The only reason we know about it is because it was said in the fine print of the Watchpoint Pack’s purchase page, which they were probably legally required to include.
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Doing anything > doing nothing. But the thing is to complain about everything 
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Lol marketing doesn’t mean they need to make it obvious
Sorry but what legally requirement? It’s a new feature
But for them to be flaunting it as a pro for Overwatch 2 like you were suggesting means they would need to make it obvious. They haven’t mentioned it literally anywhere else. Not in any articles, interviews, promotion pages, Twitter posts… etc.
You know… letting people know that they won’t be able to use the product they’re purchasing without a connected mobile number?
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Then it should not bother you that they are asking for one.
It will help cut down on a certain level of alts. Really, anyone trying to die on that hill against the phone requirement needs to sit down and have a hard think. Are you worried Bobby Kotick is going to prank call you or sell you number, cause you know he’s strapped for cash…
Show me some posts of people saying no more smurfs btw… someone would have to be terribly naïve to think this.
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If anything, the “marketing thing” is hiding it away and hoping nobody would notice it. I doubt they want all this talk of only stopping all the problems that come with alt accounts now because they have a more profitable monetisation scheme.
There are more ppl think that but im not gonna search every single of them
If overwatch 2 needs a phone number it will stop some potential f2p players to give their number therefore it’s a wall against casual not players who are used to smurf and are more determined
I don’t think many people believe requiring a phone number will stop anything… but will it reduce it & stop some from doing it? Absolutely.
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Will it really though? Is SIM card it is so cheap. We’re talking about people who already are willing to go through the effort to grind 25 levels. A SIM card isn’t going to stop them or even deter them.
[ just to play Devil’s Advocate]
Round and round we go with another one of these topics. While people are right to think that there is no silver bullet here, the problem with the “doing something is better than nothing” approach is when that something is (a) so low effort to bypass that it’s not a meaningful barrier for bad actors (b) it has a real, negative effect on legit players.
Where some of you see this as an amazingly difficult to overcome obstacle, anyone who has seen this in other games or services sees something on the order of “email validation.”
This. It’s a low effort hurdle being applied to people who already violate several rules, and spend time and money to do so.
A much, much better approach here would be to make punishments apply to all accounts a given player is known to play on. Make behavior on these alt accounts apply to the “real” accounts and you’ll put a dent in alt accounts and some class of cheaters, as it’ll means the negative behavior associated with such accounts imparts an actual risk to their overall experience/presence in the game.
Cheaters and smurfs don’t care if one of their alt accounts are banned – especially if it’s only temporary. Many of them will start caring when all of their accounts are banned.
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At least this isn’t a thread of people acting like they don’t have phones
Yeah it really is, and they are even FREE with even FREE SHIPPING! 
You dont have to charge them or anything and you can even make one phone call for free.
As I said, naïve then. It will help but it won’t stop it.
What do you mean? It takes a few minutes to get a new email and a free temporary online phone number you could use to make an account to smurf with. And now those OW accounts are free. It just became more attractive to smurf
Edit: I just realized the phone number on this account was a free temporary number
That extra little bit of effort will stop some people from doing those things
It takes a couple of minutes to do those things where as it takes several hours to grind up to level 25 do you really think that will be much extra effort for them.