Blizzard apologizes over Overwatch 2 server frustrations and removes phone requirement for a ‘majority’ of players

After years of anticipation, Overwatch 2 has finally released into Early Access. However, the release was unfortunately accompanied by some severe server issues that stopped many players from even entering the game. Long queues have been a regular occurrence, and server instability has kicked plenty of players out of matches mid-game. Technical hiccups have also cropped up with Blizzard’s new SMS Protect feature, which required all Overwatch 2 players to provide a phone number on their Battle.net accounts. Blizzard has now apologized for these issues and is taking back its stance on phone numbers.

The news comes from a post on Blizzard’s forums where Jodie, a community manager, apologizes for the rocky launch on behalf of the studio. Jodie then talks about what the studio has done and is still doing to fix these problems.

The world could always use fewer technical issues

The SMS Protect feature was designed to help Blizzard quickly respond to potential troublemakers. Unfortunately, this feature stopped some players from getting into the game, and Blizzard has now changed its stance on it. In the post, Jodie says: “We have made the decision to remove phone number requirements for a majority of existing Overwatch players. Any Overwatch player with a connected Battle.net account, which includes all players who have played since June 9, 2021, will not have to provide a phone number to play. We are working to make this change and expect it to go live on Friday, October 7.”

However, the post goes on to say that Overwatch 2 players with new accounts or accounts not already connected to Battle.net will still have to provide a phone number.

When it comes to queue times and server crashes, Blizzard has made steps to address the issue. A server patch has improved login reliability, and another patch will soon reduce the number of players dealing with disconnects.

Finally, the post addressed issues with players reporting missing items on their accounts. This is related to an issue with the UI not giving players a prompt to complete the account merging process. This is also being worked on. For some players, it’s simply taking more time than the studio thought for player inventories to transfer between Overwatch 2 and its predecessor.