The new phone requirement should require you to put in your OTP with the number matching your account, this will stop people from buying a 50c sim card then throwing it away afterwards.
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I agree, simply verifying a phone number once isn’t enough
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Yea, having to link a number once will not change anything. You can easily buy a sim card for close to nothing and will not have to keep it. Requiring OTP will cause people with mains to just register to their main number while smurfs run the risk of losing access to their account permanently if they have a throwaway number. (Unless Blizzard just gives them access to their account through email defeating the whole purpose of OTP).
You can get a phone number online for next to nothing. I don’t think anybody would be buying physical SIM cards and switching them around in actual phones.
I don’t know what the solution would be. What do other games do? Or is smurfing and throwing a problem in everything? I don’t really play any other online games.
Thats why forcing a requirement everytime you login to your account to verify you still have your number is ESSENTIAL. I would even say that every Overwatch update would require you to fill in an OTP just to ensure that accounts that are used are related to the player.
That’s not going to stop alt accounts though. Just from a quick search:
" Google Voice is a free service that lets you merge multiple phone numbers into a single number that you can call or text from. You can set up a Google Voice account on either your computer or mobile device, and immediately begin placing domestic and international calls, or sending texts."
Surely they would just use something like that.
I think at least forcing the OTP will make it more inconvenient for them to maintain multiple accounts. Nothing can be done to put a halt to this but at least showing that they are trying will be much appreciated.
God forbid people are able to use accounts they already paid for.
Umm, F2P is clearly going to make it way to easy for people to mass produce accounts. The least that can be done is requiring them to hold the number they registered long term.
Yes I agree. Although you would have thought that having to buy multiple copies of the game would have addressed the issue in the first place.
If they really wanted to I’m sure they could identify the accounts from their behaviour and stats. Give them a warning and then if they continue ban them.
Ok? The point is that players have already bought accounts from Blizzard. It wasn’t against the rules to have multiple accounts and if anything has been encouraged by Blizzard. Attempting to lock players out of their accounts is as unethical as it gets.
I’m not against alt accounts. But I do think people using alt accounts to actively ruin the game for others is an issue which needs to be addressed with OW2.
If Blizzard want to try to prevent new accounts that’s fine. Trying to prevent players from accessing accounts they already paid for is unethical and frankly they should be refunded if that’s the case.
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There are better ways to stop smurfing than just phone number though.
It’s a free game. And even in OW1 which isn’t people do get banned. I think Blizzard should make smurfing against the TOS, add a report option for it and ban players who are caught. Alt accounts is one thing, I don’t have an issue with that. Alt accounts in gold who should be in GM is the problem.
Not for the last 6 years. People paid for accounts with the understanding that multiple accounts isn’t against the rules. Denying access to these accounts is unethical and while probably technically legal Blizzard will have mislead their customers.
For breaking the rules. Owning alts is not against any rules and has been encouraged by Blizzard. Blizzard don’t get to punish players for doing things that were not against the rules at the time.
Want to change the rules so alts are bannable? That’s fine. As long as it’s only applied to accounts made after the date of the rule change.
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Did you not actually read my post. I don’t have an issue with alt accounts. I do have an issue with people using alt accounts to play way below their rank and ruin the game for everyone else.
The thing is that applies to every new account if somebody is ranked above gold. The first placements are always in gold. No matter what a high ranked player will end up in some low rank matches.
If you’re referring to players throwing their placements to make sure that they place even lower and can then slowly grind their way up the ladder instead then that’s already covered within the current rules.
That’s not an excuse for Blizzard to attempt to lock players out of every alt account. All they need to do is actually enforce the rules.
If they did this i’d chargeback every OW purchase I could and quit playing.
I have to do 2fa for everything work related and it’s beyond annoying. I don’t want to do it for a video game that’s supposed to be fun.
I think it’s going this way for comp to be honest.
Google numbers are in a discreet range, they can easily disallow that.
The original text mentioned SMS auth and postpaid accounts.