Unlike its predecessor, Overwatch 2 will be free-to-play, which of course increases the risk of cheating and people creating accounts on the fly to be able to act like fools. However, Activision is ready with a set of solutions that they call the Defense Matrix , and part of this is connected to whether the fans have mobiles or not.

In order to play the game, you have to connect a mobile phone number to your Battle.net account, and this applies regardless of the platform you play on and even if you own the first game. This is not only to be able to get the account back in case of something unexpected either, but also to make it harder for people who get banned to come back, since a specific mobile phone number can only be used for one account.

Banned persons must therefore prepare another number if they want to be able to create a new account. Blizzard also writes that certain types of numbers will not be able to be used, including debit card numbers and VOIP numbers. This latter requirement has upset some, as it appears that many will not be able to play the game. However, it does not seem to be completely clear whether this really applies to all prepaid card numbers or only with certain operators.

Overwatch 2 is released on October 4th.