Removing phone numbers is the DUMBEST decision

Hello. You have removed phone numbers for the small majority of people whining. You say people from 2021 earlier don’t have to do it, and some people are saying it’ll still stop smurfs. No it won’t.

Console players have literally infinite accounts. If you made 30 Overwatch accounts on console before the cut off date, then you will have 30 accounts that can be used for smurfing without 2FA.

(Sent from one of my 23 alt accounts)

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shrugs It’s still a finite (not renewable) amount… :wink:

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Did you honestly think Overwatch 2.0 was going to fix and stop anything? lol I mean… why even “update” the graphics when the vast majority of players play on low settings to get optimal ping and FPS? This entire sequel idea should’ve been a big update instead.

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People being able to access the game is a bigger priority than “smurfs”

I understand they were a bigger issue on console, but guess what, if the matchmaker systems works they’ll be moved up to their proper rank.

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Don’t games such as Valorant do hardware bans? Why doesn’t Blizzard just dish out hardware bans for cheaters, smurfs etc?

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Guess I’ll just have to do what I did in OW1. Report all smurfs as cheaters shrug .

God bless the vocal whiners

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…yeah I’ve heard about this. Unsure why this wasn’t implemented…? :thinking:

Because they’re looking at their past billion dollar revenues and came to the conclusion that multiple alt accounts is a better business model than banning hardware just to make the appearance of “fairness”. They WANT people to buy the game 20 times lol.

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I can’t be bothered to click on your profile, but I’m assuming you’ve never played on console before.

I had 17 alt accounts/smurfs/throwing accounts in my DPS placements alone at the end of last season. It ruins the game. The only reason I made so many alts is because I was sick of my time being wasted and matched being ruined so I just figured I’d practice a hero for each thing, sure I maybe a bronze genji that gets auto placed into gold/plat, but they don’t care about the 100s of players matches I’ll ruin by being trash at genji as I drop down to bronze lol.

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I’m happy about it. They removed it for entirely self-serving reasons and I’d be even happier if they got rid of entirely, but I’m happy nonetheless.

Smurfs are caused by weak player rating systems, not the ability to make extra accounts.

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Hardware bans are unreliable, can easily be bypassed, and also result in false positives.

In a magical world it sounds good, but in reality computers don’t work how you seem to think they do.

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They don’t get banned. Also you can’t cheat on console. The only cheating is ximming, which is terrible, but they don’t bother banning for it be cause they are lazy ****s

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yeah but who cares if some ppl have alts.

smurfing was never that big of a problem on PC, if its that big on console then yall need to have your stuff reworked so that ppl cant make infinite accounts.

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What? Smurfing is a form of cheating, which is why I stopped playing console. It was full of the scum. They should be banned, preferably IP/hardware banned (on PC ofc before anyone else gets triggerd). But Blizz gotta have those sweet sweet $$$$$$ after all from the scum.

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Yeah I definitely would’ve preferred my solution of having separate queues for verified and unverified users. Oh well. Hopefully it won’t have too big of an impact.

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last I checked, they were just adding more post paid cell carriers, right?
IF you Need to buy multiple phones just to have multiple accounts
You have a problem and should go to therapy for addiction

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In all honesty the phone number thing was mainly for cheating. Which without it, will be just that much easier. The smurfing counter measures are still there. Its the locked older heroes and the whole process of playing through the training thing and winning 50 QP games. The fact that you need all heroes to play come so a smurf will have to spend money to unlock them all. This just makes old accounts that dont need SMS worth something to someone that wants to cheat. As in hey I have 10 old accounts that dont need sms $150 each type of deal.

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The ‘small majority of people whining’ includes people who have been long time OW players, who either don’t have pre-paid phone plans (because hey, not everyone does, it’s cheaper not to) or who do have pre-paid phone plans but guess what? They’re the wrong ones apparently so they don’t count. Just cos this group doesn’t include you doesn’t mean they don’t matter. It sucks so much being a loyal fan of a game just to find out that hey you can’t play anymore for a reason that’s completely not your fault, because you ‘don’t matter’…

Yeah, people on console can have a lot of existing accounts. You know how to solve that? Crack down hard on cheating/throwing. People who do that get their accounts banned, and can’t play on them anymore. If they want to make new accounts, they need a phone number. Simple. If they cheat/throw, sooner or later they’ll run out of accounts.

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It’ll take a while to weed out the smurf accounts, but eventually they won’t be smurfs anymore. Blizzard had no other choice, it was absurd that they took the game away from so many people.

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It wasn’t a small minority, you have just been living under a rock and tuning it out whenever you saw complaints about it. Nobody liked the idea of giving away their phone number.

The phone number requirement won’t kill smurfing so stop making a fool of yourself. Smurfs are going to find a way to smurf regardless. I personally figured out ten different ways to get around it, not that I smurf anyway. It was a stupid attempt to deter smurfing, it was invasive to player’s personal information, and IT BLOCKED EXISTING PLAYERS FROM PLAYING THE GAME.

The idiotic “play 150 levels to unlock every hero” already screws over anyone making a new account. But it doesn’t change the fact that smurfs already had countless accounts from OW1 that have every hero up to echo unlocked, so it’s pointless. Smurfs who didn’t stock up on OW1 accounts will just buy level 150 accounts anyway. No matter what you lose so there is no sense in you complaining about Blizzard removing the phone number requirement when it was useless anyway and instead prevented solo account players from even playing their game.

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