10 ms·

Overwatch 2 will require a phone number to play

81 points by haunter 4y ago

branon 4y ago
Games aren't games anymore, especially multiplayer titles. _Especially_ competitive multiplayer titles aggressively marketed towards the widest range of players possible. No longer are you simply one player among thousands, you are a uniquely identifiable individual who is allowed (or not) to participate only after identifying yourself to the platform stewards. I don't think this is necessarily bad per se but it really escapes the realm of what I consider a "video game" These competitive platforms with broad mainstream appeal are more akin to social networks, with strict rules around identifying yourself and policing of what's considered acceptable speech/interactions. It makes perfect business sense but I wonder how many people are weirded out by having to explicitly identify themselves to sign up for a video game in the same way they would for a social network/plane ticket/hotel room/etc. It feels less like a game and more like a chore to me if I have to temper and guard my gaming experience because my real-life identity is on the line. Next they will want scans of my photo ID and a picture of me holding the ID next to my face with a timestamp. I'm being sarcastic here but I also think this is a pretty realistic endgame. We all know that phone number verification won't stop anybody with an ounce of motivation to cheat/troll/whatever. It's just an annoying mandated virtue-signal for the real players, as well as a tacitly implied threat: obey the rules, or your real-life UUID goes on the naughty list. To be clear, again I think this makes some sort of sense for an eSports platform, but competitive gaming as a whole kind of escapes me (old school gamer, not the target audience). Maybe they could keep the phone requirement for their professional ladder only? I yearn for the days when my relationship with the game publisher ended when I walked out of the store with my purchase.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Games are games. The 0.1% of cheaters ruin those games so much for the masses that it requires actions like this. Unaddressed cheating will literally destroy a game and bankrupt a company. It's sad that we have come to needing this kind of measures to prevent cheating, but the companies aren't the ones to blame for it.
  - haswell 4y ago
    This goes hand in hand with cheating, but I imagine this would also help reduce smurfing, which can be just as frustrating as dealing with straight up wall hack types of cheating. I think it’s tempting to look at policies like this and associate them with other trends that are broadly concerning. Minecraft comes to mind. But this seems like a very different situation, with legitimate arguments for why this may be a good thing.
    - branon 4y ago
      Smurfing being seen as something to be reduced/eliminated is also a very new concept to me. When I played MMORPGs, having a smurf (or "alt") account was VERY commonplace, it was simply an alternative way to play the game. Now, increasingly, the context seems to be that it's unacceptable/unfair for some reason. This feels wrong to me. If I can't play the game the way _I_ want to play, what use is it as a recreational activity? It's supposed to be a "game" after all so I don't understand where are all the rules and revisions are coming from. It must be because encountering alt accounts in an open-world MMO is very different than being paired with smurf accounts in a competitive matchmaking system. This I can understand, but I hope the anti-smurf thing doesn't go _too_ far. Alt accounts are the only way to re-experience the bottom of the ladder/beginning of the story in certain types of games.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        People complain about smurfing because mediocre players don't want to be matched against good players (but they will always complain that someone who wins is a smurf). It's only because matchmaking has gotten so good that it's even a problem. In the old days you matched with whoever was available and that was that. Smurfs are also different from alts in my mind at least, an alt is something like a low level WoW character when you have a main that is max level; a smurf is more like Carlsen signing up for a chess.com account under an assumed name to gleefully squish people until his rating gets high enough, then starting another account. It only really works in games where each "match" starts off fresh for both players.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  League of Legends requires a phone number to create an account on the korean server, and there's reasonably widespread belief that that rule is a huge part of why the korean server is regarded as the best in the world. In 10 player competitive games being held hostage by a bad actor sucks. On other servers players who get banned just make a new account which leads to the game not even banning anyone since "oh they'll just make a new account." But in Korea if you get banned 3 times you're totally cut off, so people behave better.
  - lawn 4y ago
    > League of Legends requires a phone number to create an account on the korean server, and there's reasonably widespread belief that that rule is a huge part of why the korean server is regarded as the best in the world. I'd attribute their gaming culture over their dystopian digital surveillance tbh.
    - madrox 4y ago
      I would not, and I think characterizing it as "dystopian digital surveillance" is disingenuous. Operators of free to play games only have so many mechanisms to make bans matter, and people behave differently if they know there are negative consequences. Overwatch has a significant toxicity problem as-is.
      - dbttdft 4y ago
        > I would not, None of the games I play have this problem. So you're wrong. I'm not claiming that this proves the problem is culture specific, just knocking down your counter claim.
        toofy 4y ago
        > None of the games I play have this problem. ooh! if you know of popular free to play games with no toxicity, im absolutely in! which games are these?
    - 4y ago
- akerl_ 4y ago
  It's not clear why having to log in to a company's servers makes something not a "game". Are MMORPGs not games? The comment about broad appeal is also a bit confusing to me. Why do things stop being games because they're designed to be accessible to many people?
  - branon 4y ago
    It's not logging into a server (MMORPG-like) that kills it for me, it's the push to link the in-game identity with a real-life identifier. It's not (in an almost literal sense!) a game anymore at that point. For the broad appeal bit, I was thinking tragedy of the commons. A critical mass of actors (good and bad alike) has got to be one of the main drivers behind such a decision. So I'm thinking the more popular a game gets, the higher the likelihood that drastic actions like this are taken, ostensibly to defend against some boogeyman or other.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      taking notes for Metaverse apps here
    - kowbell 4y ago
      > It's not (in an almost literal sense!) a game anymore at that point I’m curious what your definition of a game is?
    - akerl_ 4y ago
      I’m not sure what definition of game you’re using, where having to validate your account with a real life identifier (which feels vague, since basically every multiplayer platform already has accounts tied to email addresses, because of course they do) makes something “not a game anymore”. But that’s not the definition that I’m aware of in use anywhere else.
      - branon 4y ago
        Email addresses aren't real-life identifiers, although they could be used that way. And on the inverse, I can buy a burner phone with cash and defeat Blizzard's requirement easily. But it's pretty clear what Blizzard is going for here, since we know their platform is competitive and thus harsher on individuals viewed as bad actors. Blizzard knows full well that most people signing up to play only have one phone number, which is most certainly a real-life identifier for those players. My point is that if players feel compelled to self-censor their interactions online for fear of repercussions[0], then they are not playing a game. They are instead representing themselves as individuals on a social network with competitive/gamified attributes. Requiring phone numbers to play is just a method to gently reinforce this. To each their own - this might be exactly the type of game you like to play. But it departs pretty strongly from the classical definition of "video game" that I grew up with. [0] For example, your primary phone number being disallowed access to all Blizzard services. Maybe they go even further and request that 3rd party services ban you for off-platform violations. Moved this down to a footnote so as not to spread FUD, I'm sure they don't currently do this, nor do I expect them to. But cross-referencing phone numbers would make it very easy to start.
- cronix 4y ago
  And if you're a console player you also get to pay monthly for the privilege of playing online. I miss when game companies didn't host their own games and you could just download the server portion and host it yourself (or rent a server). You can't even play a lot of the single player games/modes without a connection now. > heavily policed speech. I also miss the days when there was no communication provided in-game. It's unnecessary for the vast majority of games. And if we wanted that, we used xfire or something external to collaborate, outside of what has now become yet another walled garden.
  - belltaco 4y ago
    >I miss when game companies didn't host their own games and you could just download the server portion and host it yourself (or rent a server) I have hosted several servers for several games over the years but they have huge disadvantages too. One of them being that server admins can see IP addresses of players, and that leads to DDoS. Admin can also be fickle and kick players for whatever reason, had a popular server(which turned into the only server as the game got old) where the admin would kick women if they didn't respond positively to his creepy flirting. And there is no automated matchmaking that takes balance into account.
    - q-big 4y ago
      > Admin can also be fickle and kick players for whatever reason, This also describes the behaviour of common game providers. The difference is: you can switch to a different server if you are annoyed by this, but cannot get rid of the game provider/publisher. > And there is no automated matchmaking that takes balance into account. This could in principle be implemented.
  - derekdahmer 4y ago
    I’m nostalgic for the clubhouse feel of private servers but I played CounterStrike 1.6 in the early 2000s and also remember nightly encounters with aimbots, wall hacks, porn sprays, toxic voice chat and uneven teams because there was no centralized matchmaking. Todays system certainly has trade offs but the competitive experience is so much better.
- kubav 4y ago
  "Next they will want scans of my photo ID and a picture of me holding the ID next to my face with a timestamp." Is this a bad think? F2P games are more lottery than video games. There would be statistics how many kids play it. In the best case scenario this would result in regulation of those practices.
- madrox 4y ago
  As you say, these are social networks, and your ability to connect with other people playing the game opens all kinds of avenues for attacks and harassment as social networks. No one wants to put up with misanthropes just to play their favorite video game. You can still have that relationship with your publisher, but if you want that in your multiplayer game, you have to go back to a day where people behaved differently on the internet. Those days are gone, and it's not the publisher's fault. It's ours.
  - q-big 4y ago
    > You can still have that relationship with your publisher, but if you want that in your multiplayer game, you have to go back to a day where people behaved differently on the internet. Those days are gone, and it's not the publisher's fault. It's ours. In these former days where people behaved differently on the internet, the internet was an insanely weird and wild place where the people did and posted things that are typically not considered acceptable behaviour anymore. To get just a glimpse on this topic, see, for example, the following linked article and its dicussion on Hacker News: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025477
- Lammy 4y ago
  > Next they will want scans of my photo ID and a picture of me holding the ID next to my face with a timestamp. I'm being sarcastic here but I also think this is a pretty realistic endgame. But of course. After all, we can’t risk giving certain cohorts of people too much self-determination before they’re fully indoctrinated into The Economy: http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2019-11/06/content_5449157.htm http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2019-11/06/content_5449157.htm (Google Translate disclaimer) “Implement the real-name registration system for online game accounts — To this end, the "Notice" requires strict real-name registration, and all online game users must use valid identity information to register for game accounts.” Strictly control the length of time for minors to use online games — It is stipulated that no game service shall be provided for minors from 22:00 to 8:00 the next day, and the daily period of statutory holidays shall not exceed 3 hours, and other hours shall not exceed 1.5 hours per day.”
- nradov 4y ago
  I don't understand these games. With all the hoops you have to jump through just to start playing and then all the grinding to level up it seems almost like applying for and then working a job. Except you're the one paying, not getting paid. Is this actually fun or am I missing something? It's a nice day outside, think I'll take my dog for a walk.
  - CrendKing 4y ago
    What about Chess? By your definition, since have to work really hard to level up the elo, and for some professional individuals it is how they survive. Do we suddenly consider Chess no longer a game? You know, some people can really feel and obsess to thee enjoyment when they learn, progress and eventually beat worthy opponents, such enjoyment dog walking will never endow.
- keypusher 4y ago
  So if I walk into an arcade, and the owner stops and says “hey, we’ve had some incidents recently and you need to write down your name and phone number on this sheet of paper before you can play anything”, all the arcade cabinets suddenly stop being video games? That doesn’t really make any sense.
  - droopyEyelids 4y ago
    If you’re trying to argue by analogy, your opponent will always find a way to disagree over the irrelevant aspects of the analogy If you’re arguing with someone who is making an analogy, you’re wasting your time because it's so easy to ignore their point. Analogies only work between people cooperating to understand something, so just ignore ‘em if youre not working together
- spoiler 4y ago
  I think you can still play unranked without a phone number, though. So, people who don't want to take the game seriously don't have to. It's a nice compromise, between that and fighting hordes of cheaters/smurfs/whatnits
- whateveracct 4y ago
  It is still just a game though. For fun. Just because they want to posit their toy as a sport doesn't mean it is. Luckily there's plenty of competitive games out there that are actually fun. The meatgrinder of matchmaking isn't actually the elite competitive environment these gamers think it is. Real competitive video games are played IRL. Your online eSport PC game of the month does not compare to a real tournament at your local arcade/community college/bar/netcafe. If your game doesn't have those, then it's probably a skinner box posing as a ladder with different colored badges as prizes.
glitchc 4y ago
Wow, a hard pass at this point.
- sushid 4y ago
  I dunno. I truly detested being in competitive games with a "thrower" (someone who will blatantly try to sabotage their own team) and I imagine this will help quite a bit to mitigate the problem.
  - Bolkan 4y ago
    Rocket league 1v1s are pretty balanced IMO.
    - xboxnolifes 4y ago
      1s have the issue of always having a shitter on my team.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  As a regular Overwatch player, I’m super happy about this.
  - akerl_ 4y ago
    Hard agree. I play casually, and running into people throwing or smurfing is a great way to turn a fun night into a trashfire.
3qz 4y ago
Great news for all the parents who have a separate account from their kids
mminer237 4y ago
Notably, all of Valve's competitive games—Dota 2, CS:GO, and Team Fortress 2—already require this. I'm not sure I support it, but even minor barriers help fight cheaters and smurfs. Edit: Apparently they're not actually as strict as I remember, but all three definitely have some sort of a system.
- emsy 4y ago
  I figure you don’t regularly play CSGO then ;)
  - mminer237 4y ago
    I don't, haha. My recollection is that it was required for ranked to avoid being put in some "cheater lobby" or something, but it's been a few years.
- exrook 4y ago
  I'm not sure where your getting this from, a phone number is _optional_ for CSGO, adding one is said to improve your "trust factor"[0], theoretically improving your matchmaking experience. I don't believe TF2 has any sort of phone number system that I'm aware of. If there is one, it doesn't seem to function very well given the bot invasion over the last few years. I can't speak to dota 2 as I've never played it. [0] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/00EF-D679-C76A-C185 https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/00EF-D679-C76A-C1...
  - bombcar 4y ago
    One way of doing all this stuff is creating "haves" and "have nots" where those who have a higher credit score from age of account, phone number, etc, get better matchmaking (against players of a similar high score) than those who forgo those things.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    CSGO used to require a phone number. It changed a bit to be "optional", but all that really means now is that they made the system more opaque. It used to be that to get prime queue (or whatever it was called) you need to phone number, since the open queue was filled with hackers. The new systems still attempts to do the same, just without the hard boundary. You may end up in the hacker lobby, or you may not. You won't know.
jwilber 4y ago
Makes sense. Valve already does this for all of their competitive games, it’s basically what you need to do to stop easy smurfing if your game is free-to-play.
rubyist5eva 4y ago
This is way less egregious than Blizzard shutting down Overwatch 1 (which I paid for) and just replacing it with Overwatch 2. It's not even out yet and previews are not great, especially the new player grind - it seems designed to explicitly fish for the whales from the original game only. As someone that plays OW casually, I'm not happy that Blizzard is taking away something that I paid money for and giving me something that I do not want in the slightest. I can still play CS:Source to this day, yet they need to shut down Overwatch because the sequel is out? Modern gaming is absolute garbage. This whole "you only purchase a license to play the game" nonsense is getting out of control.
- delecti 4y ago
  > taking away something that I paid money for and giving me something that I do not want In that sense, there's really very little difference between Overwatch 2 and an update you don't like in any other live service game. It's no different from the many games which have previously gone free-to-play. And to be clear, I'm not saying you're wrong to be unhappy, I'm saying that your framing is really just not accurate. Overwatch 2 is really just a peculiar name for Overwatch 1's free-to-play update.
  - rubyist5eva 4y ago
    > In that sense, there's really very little difference between Overwatch 2 and an update you don't like in any other live service game. Yeah, I totally get it. I'm still miffed that they updated the game in a way that leaves me unable to play the version I actually like. I do not find this new update appealing at all. When Overwatch came out (when I bought it) "live service" games hadn't really reached a critical mass in the market yet so the idea that they would do something like this was kinda unheard of.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Don't worry - in a few years they'll get you to pay for Overwatch Classic!
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
Please drink a verification can
zppln 4y ago
People are prepared to put up with a lot of bullshit to get their gaming fix. I'm pretty sure Blizzard could get more than a phone number out of me a few beers in on a Friday night. Especially if my friends where already signed up and ready to go.
legitster 4y ago
> Likewise, (some) prepaid phones won’t work, and neither will VoIP numbers (which use IP networks to make calls or send texts). Likewise, a landline phone number won’t work either. This affects me. If only I could give them a phone number. I've had a Cricket family plan for 5+ years and their official support recommendation is to "change number or carrier". They offer no other authentication options - not even a credit card. Am I going to pay an extra $50 a month to play your "free" game? No thank you. There are some people who prepaid for their early access content and are now fighting to get their money back on a game they can't even play. What a stupidly anti-customer company. All this for a game that is a glorified patch of the previous one.
- klysm 4y ago
  Unfortunately I don’t think the economics are in your favor as I assume you are within a small enough segment to make this worth it.
  - legitster 4y ago
    Cricket alone has 12 million subscribers in the US. Metro PCS has ~18 million. Boost Mobile has 8 million. You're looking at 30 million+ people who flat out cannot even play the game.
  - dbttdft 4y ago
    Yes, but this was something obvious from the outset from an engineering standpoint. I would never consider requiring phone verification for my games. I don't even require an email account as lots of games do (because of cargo cult) these days. The Western software development bubble (largely the demographic of HN) is full of self centered people / ignorant people who have never seen hardware aside from a Mac or a $2K Windows box, who buy a new phone literally every year, who claim to be saving the world. On the contrary what you get is web browsers being too slow to run on hardware of someone who lives outside the West and being banned from the game because outside the West you can't conform to the game's asinine requirements. The irony on top of the irony is that the ones who think of themselves affluent for this are not at all: cell phones and their protocols are badly engineered technology.
madrox 4y ago
The toxicity of random matchmaking has gotten out of hand. Whenever I decide to dive into a game of Overwatch, I'm rolling the dice on whether any of my five teammates will be misanthropes, and the odds are quite high these days. I shouldn't be subjected to that to play a team based game. Your ability to play nice with others should be a data point. To make that a data point, bans need to have teeth. Bad behavior needs to have consequences. We have to disrupt the Internet Fuckward Theory [1]. People who don't like the idea of phone numbers maybe should propose alternatives, because things are not fine the way they are. 1: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/325699-greater-internet-fuckwad-theory https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/325699-greater-internet-fuck...
- Havoc 4y ago
  > I'm rolling the dice on whether any of my five teammates will be misanthropes, and the odds are quite high these days Really? Out of a 100 players, 7 interact vaguely positively (gg, glhf etc), 3 are salty and the other 90 are silent.
  - madrox 4y ago
    Your games are different from mine, it seems
- ronsor 4y ago
  > People who don't like the idea of phone numbers maybe should propose alternatives, because things are not fine the way they are "There is no alternative" is not an excuse to implement a bad decision, short of a need to physically save lives. Bad actors can get phone numbers for verification stupidly easily, meanwhile privacy continues to be eroded for the sake of stopping them.
  - madrox 4y ago
    At one point, I was working at a company where attackers were spamming our service with ToS-violating content (moslty porn but many grotesque, violent stuff). The decision was made to require a phone number on the account to disable the attack. I argued that phone numbers were stupid easy to get and bypass this measure, but we did it anyway. To my complete surprise, the attackers didn't bother the obviously surmountable hurdle of getting burner numbers. Yes, phone numbers aren't perfect, but in practice they're surprisingly effective. I fail to see how privacy can both be eroded while also saying phone numbers are stupidly easy to get and bypass. If you're concerned about the privacy of your phone number, feel free to avail yourself of the same methods the bad actors could use. Burner is a legal app. I think calling this a bad decision is arguable. We hand over phone numbers for MFA all the time. I think this is a perfectly fine decision walking well away from the border of invasiveness, which is why I put the burden on critics to define an alternative.
blibble 4y ago
prior to the separate matchmaker rating per role ("role queue") I had three accounts: - one for support (which I'm pretty good at, main account) - one for DPS (which I'm ok at) - one for tank (which I suck at) why? so I didn't ruin games when I played something other than support I've not used the other 2 accounts since then, but out of curiosity I tried adding phone numbers to their accounts from my pile of free UK SIMs from various providers (my "backup internet" plan) 3/6 networks registered fine (no credit required) quite how they expect this to stop smurfing/hacking if any kid in the UK can pick up 10 free SIMs from a phone shop and get 10 new overwatch accounts
andy_xor_andrew 4y ago
Discussion about Overwatch 2 always makes me feel as if I am living in an alternate universe. Let me paint you a picture of October 2019: In Hong Kong, this is happening, and it's a big deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr... Meanwhile, Overwatch remains an immensely popular arena shooter, with frequent content updates and new characters. The type of game, like Team Fortress 2, that does not see "sequels" per say, but rather an ongoing evolution. The game is 3 years old. What I'm trying to say is, in October 2019, the idea of "Overwatch 2" seems entirely, entirely absurd. Then, on October 6, this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy Not sure if you recall, but this was a HUGE fire-and-pitchfork controversy. #BoycottBlizzard became a real thing. I was among them, permanently cancelling my accounts, because that mattered to me. Again, this was a BIG DEAL. https://www.pcgamer.com/brian-kibler-says-he-will-not-take-part-in-future-hearthstone-grandmasters-streams/ https://www.pcgamer.com/brian-kibler-says-he-will-not-take-p... Less than one month later, Blizzcon 2019 happened. If you remember the atmosphere at that moment, people weren't even sure if BlizzCon would happen at all. It seemed like it may simply be cancelled. And what happened at BlizzCon? Announcing... OVERWATCH 2. The sequel to the popular arena shooter. Will there be new characters? Uh, probably, but definitely there will be reskins! Okay, when's it out? Uh... eventually, one day, TBD! That was 2019. Blizzard announced Overwatch 2 in 2019. The amount of time between that announcement and today is roughly equal to the amount of time between Overwatch 1 being released, and the controversy. Am I insane? Is it not extremely, extremely obvious why Blizzard made the "surprising" move to announce a game that no one expected, and to this day has not been released?
- gigaflop 4y ago
  As someone who put down Overwatch a while ago, after having actually enjoyed it for a while, I have no desire to pick up OW2. Activision-Blizzard's merger tells me that 'Classic Blizzard' will never again exist, and that I should discard what goodwill I have left towards either publisher. Overwatch's monetization model was not the best (they helped pioneer loot boxes, with no information on odds), and now they're locking new characters behind a Battlepass for OW2. F2P players will be able to unlock the hero eventually, but according to current leaks, competitive modes will lock out players who don't have all characters unlocked. Diablo Immortal is something I've never played, but I've enjoyed listening to some of the drama. After Blizz cracked down on third-party sellers of the game's real-money currency, some people had their Eternal Orb balances go negative(!!!) when they removed the Orbs from their account. With a negative Orb count, players get locked out of participating in some of the game. The only by-the-books way to restore that functionality is to buy more Orbs from the store. One headline you can easily find is a player with over $30k worth of 'Orb Debt', as in, they would need to spend that much money in order to get to a balance of 0. Acti/Blizz's monetization schemes have become more manipulative over time, and as of now, it's leaching into how people can actually play the game. Swipe your credit card, or you're gonna be behind. Another can of worms, which I will label instead of open: Blizzard's recently-unearthed history of sexual harassment in the workplace, and etc etc.
voidwtf 4y ago
I don’t understand how this is controversial. If you’ve ever played a competitive game then you’ve almost certainly encountered an abusive player. I don’t just mean verbally abusive, I mean the player who quits the game, AFKs, or intentionally feeds the enemy team when they don’t get the role they want. Maybe you’ve encountered the player who dodges the match the moment their favorite character is selected. Typically even if the game ended the moment they left, or if there was a vote kick/remake mechanism. You will have lost at least 2-3 minutes of your time, if not the length of an entire match. As a child, maybe this is acceptable, you can just move on to the next match. As an adult who can only set aside enough time for one or two matches it’s devastating. It’s the type of behavior that you the good behaving, rule respecting, team player gets penalized for. When there is no restriction on just creating new accounts, these negative types of players just create a new account after they get banned or penalized and continue being negative players. Increasingly these new accounts are being sold for $0.50 to $3.00, pre made with the tutorial missions completed, so that these negative players can spend a tiny amount of money and jump right into ruining another persons night. I hope all multiplayer games start to add in this type of requirement. Bad behavior should be punished in an enforceable way.
- q-big 4y ago
  > It’s the type of behavior that you the good behaving, rule respecting, team player gets penalized for. This rather sounds like badly designed scoring rules.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  I'm mildly annoyed by it because it really doesn't work. Something you might not realize is in games that require phone numbers > Increasingly these new accounts are being sold for $0.50 to $3.00, This is still true: https://www.playerauctions.com/cod-account/warzone/ https://www.playerauctions.com/cod-account/warzone/ Unfortunately the best deterrent OW 1 has was being paid.
  - voidwtf 4y ago
    I’ll respond to this, but I’m also replying to another that noted how cheap phone numbers are. In the beginning, yes, they appear to be cheap. But that doesn’t last very long in my prior experience, the last multiplayer platform I used that used phone number verification blocked several VoIP carriers shortly after they started abusing the ease of getting numbers. This was super effective, overnight games got significantly better. Rinse and repeat, adding region locking of phone region to server region, etc… I know it’s not perfect, but you can’t forgo good for a lack of perfect. Every hoop removes a non-trivial amount of bad actors. I’d rather have one game a week be annoying, then 3 dodges and 1 disconnect nearly every attempt at playing.
ajkjk 4y ago
The segment of HN's readership whose ideology is simply "privacy or bust" are unsurprisingly vehemently opposed to this, but for everyone else this is super reasonable... anything to improve the integrity of the competition so your progression feels fair and meaningful.
- JadoJodo 4y ago
  This is only necessary because Blizzard decided that IAPs + Free-to-Play (Overwatch 2) was worth more than charging customers outright for a quality product (Overwatch).
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    The alternative side is, games are very expensive in a lot of the world. F2P games are one of the only ways a lot more people get to enjoy them.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    It’s becoming almost required to follow this business model. These games live and die on active player count. And the easiest way to get the most players is to lower the barriers to entry. You need to get players in for free and then charge the ones open to paying later with cosmetics.
- odessacubbage 4y ago
  i can guarantee you that requiring a wired connection for ranked matches would do far more to improve your experience than any kind of blizzard panopticon scheme will.
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    That's absurd. Match quality is fine even with people having slightly less than optimal ping. And then you get one troll every few games that just totally ruins it.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
This is bad and will prevent me from buying it. Oh well, more factorio for me I guess. They could tie your account to something else.

81 points by haunter 4y ago

Games aren't games anymore, especially multiplayer titles. _Especially_ competitive multiplayer titles aggressively marketed towards the widest range of players possible. No longer are you simply one player among thousands, you are a uniquely identifiable individual who is allowed (or not) to participate only after identifying yourself to the platform stewards. I don't think this is necessarily bad per se but it really escapes the realm of what I consider a "video game" These competitive platforms with broad mainstream appeal are more akin to social networks, with strict rules around identifying yourself and policing of what's considered acceptable speech/interactions. It makes perfect business sense but I wonder how many people are weirded out by having to explicitly identify themselves to sign up for a video game in the same way they would for a social network/plane ticket/hotel room/etc. It feels less like a game and more like a chore to me if I have to temper and guard my gaming experience because my real-life identity is on the line. Next they will want scans of my photo ID and a picture of me holding the ID next to my face with a timestamp. I'm being sarcastic here but I also think this is a pretty realistic endgame. We all know that phone number verification won't stop anybody with an ounce of motivation to cheat/troll/whatever. It's just an annoying mandated virtue-signal for the real players, as well as a tacitly implied threat: obey the rules, or your real-life UUID goes on the naughty list. To be clear, again I think this makes some sort of sense for an eSports platform, but competitive gaming as a whole kind of escapes me (old school gamer, not the target audience). Maybe they could keep the phone requirement for their professional ladder only? I yearn for the days when my relationship with the game publisher ended when I walked out of the store with my purchase.

iLoveOncall 4y ago
Games are games. The 0.1% of cheaters ruin those games so much for the masses that it requires actions like this. Unaddressed cheating will literally destroy a game and bankrupt a company. It's sad that we have come to needing this kind of measures to prevent cheating, but the companies aren't the ones to blame for it.
- haswell 4y ago
  This goes hand in hand with cheating, but I imagine this would also help reduce smurfing, which can be just as frustrating as dealing with straight up wall hack types of cheating. I think it’s tempting to look at policies like this and associate them with other trends that are broadly concerning. Minecraft comes to mind. But this seems like a very different situation, with legitimate arguments for why this may be a good thing.
  - branon 4y ago
    Smurfing being seen as something to be reduced/eliminated is also a very new concept to me. When I played MMORPGs, having a smurf (or "alt") account was VERY commonplace, it was simply an alternative way to play the game. Now, increasingly, the context seems to be that it's unacceptable/unfair for some reason. This feels wrong to me. If I can't play the game the way _I_ want to play, what use is it as a recreational activity? It's supposed to be a "game" after all so I don't understand where are all the rules and revisions are coming from. It must be because encountering alt accounts in an open-world MMO is very different than being paired with smurf accounts in a competitive matchmaking system. This I can understand, but I hope the anti-smurf thing doesn't go _too_ far. Alt accounts are the only way to re-experience the bottom of the ladder/beginning of the story in certain types of games.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      People complain about smurfing because mediocre players don't want to be matched against good players (but they will always complain that someone who wins is a smurf). It's only because matchmaking has gotten so good that it's even a problem. In the old days you matched with whoever was available and that was that. Smurfs are also different from alts in my mind at least, an alt is something like a low level WoW character when you have a main that is max level; a smurf is more like Carlsen signing up for a chess.com account under an assumed name to gleefully squish people until his rating gets high enough, then starting another account. It only really works in games where each "match" starts off fresh for both players.
colinmhayes 4y ago
League of Legends requires a phone number to create an account on the korean server, and there's reasonably widespread belief that that rule is a huge part of why the korean server is regarded as the best in the world. In 10 player competitive games being held hostage by a bad actor sucks. On other servers players who get banned just make a new account which leads to the game not even banning anyone since "oh they'll just make a new account." But in Korea if you get banned 3 times you're totally cut off, so people behave better.
- lawn 4y ago
  > League of Legends requires a phone number to create an account on the korean server, and there's reasonably widespread belief that that rule is a huge part of why the korean server is regarded as the best in the world. I'd attribute their gaming culture over their dystopian digital surveillance tbh.
  - madrox 4y ago
    I would not, and I think characterizing it as "dystopian digital surveillance" is disingenuous. Operators of free to play games only have so many mechanisms to make bans matter, and people behave differently if they know there are negative consequences. Overwatch has a significant toxicity problem as-is.
    - dbttdft 4y ago
      > I would not, None of the games I play have this problem. So you're wrong. I'm not claiming that this proves the problem is culture specific, just knocking down your counter claim.
      - toofy 4y ago
        > None of the games I play have this problem. ooh! if you know of popular free to play games with no toxicity, im absolutely in! which games are these?
  - 4y ago
akerl_ 4y ago
It's not clear why having to log in to a company's servers makes something not a "game". Are MMORPGs not games? The comment about broad appeal is also a bit confusing to me. Why do things stop being games because they're designed to be accessible to many people?
- branon 4y ago
  It's not logging into a server (MMORPG-like) that kills it for me, it's the push to link the in-game identity with a real-life identifier. It's not (in an almost literal sense!) a game anymore at that point. For the broad appeal bit, I was thinking tragedy of the commons. A critical mass of actors (good and bad alike) has got to be one of the main drivers behind such a decision. So I'm thinking the more popular a game gets, the higher the likelihood that drastic actions like this are taken, ostensibly to defend against some boogeyman or other.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    taking notes for Metaverse apps here
  - kowbell 4y ago
    > It's not (in an almost literal sense!) a game anymore at that point I’m curious what your definition of a game is?
  - akerl_ 4y ago
    I’m not sure what definition of game you’re using, where having to validate your account with a real life identifier (which feels vague, since basically every multiplayer platform already has accounts tied to email addresses, because of course they do) makes something “not a game anymore”. But that’s not the definition that I’m aware of in use anywhere else.
    - branon 4y ago
      Email addresses aren't real-life identifiers, although they could be used that way. And on the inverse, I can buy a burner phone with cash and defeat Blizzard's requirement easily. But it's pretty clear what Blizzard is going for here, since we know their platform is competitive and thus harsher on individuals viewed as bad actors. Blizzard knows full well that most people signing up to play only have one phone number, which is most certainly a real-life identifier for those players. My point is that if players feel compelled to self-censor their interactions online for fear of repercussions[0], then they are not playing a game. They are instead representing themselves as individuals on a social network with competitive/gamified attributes. Requiring phone numbers to play is just a method to gently reinforce this. To each their own - this might be exactly the type of game you like to play. But it departs pretty strongly from the classical definition of "video game" that I grew up with. [0] For example, your primary phone number being disallowed access to all Blizzard services. Maybe they go even further and request that 3rd party services ban you for off-platform violations. Moved this down to a footnote so as not to spread FUD, I'm sure they don't currently do this, nor do I expect them to. But cross-referencing phone numbers would make it very easy to start.
cronix 4y ago
And if you're a console player you also get to pay monthly for the privilege of playing online. I miss when game companies didn't host their own games and you could just download the server portion and host it yourself (or rent a server). You can't even play a lot of the single player games/modes without a connection now. > heavily policed speech. I also miss the days when there was no communication provided in-game. It's unnecessary for the vast majority of games. And if we wanted that, we used xfire or something external to collaborate, outside of what has now become yet another walled garden.
- belltaco 4y ago
  >I miss when game companies didn't host their own games and you could just download the server portion and host it yourself (or rent a server) I have hosted several servers for several games over the years but they have huge disadvantages too. One of them being that server admins can see IP addresses of players, and that leads to DDoS. Admin can also be fickle and kick players for whatever reason, had a popular server(which turned into the only server as the game got old) where the admin would kick women if they didn't respond positively to his creepy flirting. And there is no automated matchmaking that takes balance into account.
  - q-big 4y ago
    > Admin can also be fickle and kick players for whatever reason, This also describes the behaviour of common game providers. The difference is: you can switch to a different server if you are annoyed by this, but cannot get rid of the game provider/publisher. > And there is no automated matchmaking that takes balance into account. This could in principle be implemented.
- derekdahmer 4y ago
  I’m nostalgic for the clubhouse feel of private servers but I played CounterStrike 1.6 in the early 2000s and also remember nightly encounters with aimbots, wall hacks, porn sprays, toxic voice chat and uneven teams because there was no centralized matchmaking. Todays system certainly has trade offs but the competitive experience is so much better.
kubav 4y ago
"Next they will want scans of my photo ID and a picture of me holding the ID next to my face with a timestamp." Is this a bad think? F2P games are more lottery than video games. There would be statistics how many kids play it. In the best case scenario this would result in regulation of those practices.
madrox 4y ago
As you say, these are social networks, and your ability to connect with other people playing the game opens all kinds of avenues for attacks and harassment as social networks. No one wants to put up with misanthropes just to play their favorite video game. You can still have that relationship with your publisher, but if you want that in your multiplayer game, you have to go back to a day where people behaved differently on the internet. Those days are gone, and it's not the publisher's fault. It's ours.
- q-big 4y ago
  > You can still have that relationship with your publisher, but if you want that in your multiplayer game, you have to go back to a day where people behaved differently on the internet. Those days are gone, and it's not the publisher's fault. It's ours. In these former days where people behaved differently on the internet, the internet was an insanely weird and wild place where the people did and posted things that are typically not considered acceptable behaviour anymore. To get just a glimpse on this topic, see, for example, the following linked article and its dicussion on Hacker News: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025477
Lammy 4y ago
> Next they will want scans of my photo ID and a picture of me holding the ID next to my face with a timestamp. I'm being sarcastic here but I also think this is a pretty realistic endgame. But of course. After all, we can’t risk giving certain cohorts of people too much self-determination before they’re fully indoctrinated into The Economy: http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2019-11/06/content_5449157.htm http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2019-11/06/content_5449157.htm (Google Translate disclaimer) “Implement the real-name registration system for online game accounts — To this end, the "Notice" requires strict real-name registration, and all online game users must use valid identity information to register for game accounts.” Strictly control the length of time for minors to use online games — It is stipulated that no game service shall be provided for minors from 22:00 to 8:00 the next day, and the daily period of statutory holidays shall not exceed 3 hours, and other hours shall not exceed 1.5 hours per day.”
nradov 4y ago
I don't understand these games. With all the hoops you have to jump through just to start playing and then all the grinding to level up it seems almost like applying for and then working a job. Except you're the one paying, not getting paid. Is this actually fun or am I missing something? It's a nice day outside, think I'll take my dog for a walk.
- CrendKing 4y ago
  What about Chess? By your definition, since have to work really hard to level up the elo, and for some professional individuals it is how they survive. Do we suddenly consider Chess no longer a game? You know, some people can really feel and obsess to thee enjoyment when they learn, progress and eventually beat worthy opponents, such enjoyment dog walking will never endow.
keypusher 4y ago
So if I walk into an arcade, and the owner stops and says “hey, we’ve had some incidents recently and you need to write down your name and phone number on this sheet of paper before you can play anything”, all the arcade cabinets suddenly stop being video games? That doesn’t really make any sense.
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  If you’re trying to argue by analogy, your opponent will always find a way to disagree over the irrelevant aspects of the analogy If you’re arguing with someone who is making an analogy, you’re wasting your time because it's so easy to ignore their point. Analogies only work between people cooperating to understand something, so just ignore ‘em if youre not working together
spoiler 4y ago
I think you can still play unranked without a phone number, though. So, people who don't want to take the game seriously don't have to. It's a nice compromise, between that and fighting hordes of cheaters/smurfs/whatnits
whateveracct 4y ago
It is still just a game though. For fun. Just because they want to posit their toy as a sport doesn't mean it is. Luckily there's plenty of competitive games out there that are actually fun. The meatgrinder of matchmaking isn't actually the elite competitive environment these gamers think it is. Real competitive video games are played IRL. Your online eSport PC game of the month does not compare to a real tournament at your local arcade/community college/bar/netcafe. If your game doesn't have those, then it's probably a skinner box posing as a ladder with different colored badges as prizes.

glitchc 4y ago

Wow, a hard pass at this point.

sushid 4y ago
I dunno. I truly detested being in competitive games with a "thrower" (someone who will blatantly try to sabotage their own team) and I imagine this will help quite a bit to mitigate the problem.
- Bolkan 4y ago
  Rocket league 1v1s are pretty balanced IMO.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    1s have the issue of always having a shitter on my team.
CharlesW 4y ago
As a regular Overwatch player, I’m super happy about this.
- akerl_ 4y ago
  Hard agree. I play casually, and running into people throwing or smurfing is a great way to turn a fun night into a trashfire.

3qz 4y ago

Great news for all the parents who have a separate account from their kids

mminer237 4y ago

Notably, all of Valve's competitive games—Dota 2, CS:GO, and Team Fortress 2—already require this. I'm not sure I support it, but even minor barriers help fight cheaters and smurfs. Edit: Apparently they're not actually as strict as I remember, but all three definitely have some sort of a system.

emsy 4y ago
I figure you don’t regularly play CSGO then ;)
- mminer237 4y ago
  I don't, haha. My recollection is that it was required for ranked to avoid being put in some "cheater lobby" or something, but it's been a few years.
exrook 4y ago
I'm not sure where your getting this from, a phone number is _optional_ for CSGO, adding one is said to improve your "trust factor"[0], theoretically improving your matchmaking experience. I don't believe TF2 has any sort of phone number system that I'm aware of. If there is one, it doesn't seem to function very well given the bot invasion over the last few years. I can't speak to dota 2 as I've never played it. [0] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/00EF-D679-C76A-C185 https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/00EF-D679-C76A-C1...
- bombcar 4y ago
  One way of doing all this stuff is creating "haves" and "have nots" where those who have a higher credit score from age of account, phone number, etc, get better matchmaking (against players of a similar high score) than those who forgo those things.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  CSGO used to require a phone number. It changed a bit to be "optional", but all that really means now is that they made the system more opaque. It used to be that to get prime queue (or whatever it was called) you need to phone number, since the open queue was filled with hackers. The new systems still attempts to do the same, just without the hard boundary. You may end up in the hacker lobby, or you may not. You won't know.

jwilber 4y ago

Makes sense. Valve already does this for all of their competitive games, it’s basically what you need to do to stop easy smurfing if your game is free-to-play.

rubyist5eva 4y ago

This is way less egregious than Blizzard shutting down Overwatch 1 (which I paid for) and just replacing it with Overwatch 2. It's not even out yet and previews are not great, especially the new player grind - it seems designed to explicitly fish for the whales from the original game only. As someone that plays OW casually, I'm not happy that Blizzard is taking away something that I paid money for and giving me something that I do not want in the slightest. I can still play CS:Source to this day, yet they need to shut down Overwatch because the sequel is out? Modern gaming is absolute garbage. This whole "you only purchase a license to play the game" nonsense is getting out of control.

delecti 4y ago
> taking away something that I paid money for and giving me something that I do not want In that sense, there's really very little difference between Overwatch 2 and an update you don't like in any other live service game. It's no different from the many games which have previously gone free-to-play. And to be clear, I'm not saying you're wrong to be unhappy, I'm saying that your framing is really just not accurate. Overwatch 2 is really just a peculiar name for Overwatch 1's free-to-play update.
- rubyist5eva 4y ago
  > In that sense, there's really very little difference between Overwatch 2 and an update you don't like in any other live service game. Yeah, I totally get it. I'm still miffed that they updated the game in a way that leaves me unable to play the version I actually like. I do not find this new update appealing at all. When Overwatch came out (when I bought it) "live service" games hadn't really reached a critical mass in the market yet so the idea that they would do something like this was kinda unheard of.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Don't worry - in a few years they'll get you to pay for Overwatch Classic!

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

Please drink a verification can

zppln 4y ago

People are prepared to put up with a lot of bullshit to get their gaming fix. I'm pretty sure Blizzard could get more than a phone number out of me a few beers in on a Friday night. Especially if my friends where already signed up and ready to go.

legitster 4y ago

> Likewise, (some) prepaid phones won’t work, and neither will VoIP numbers (which use IP networks to make calls or send texts). Likewise, a landline phone number won’t work either. This affects me. If only I could give them a phone number. I've had a Cricket family plan for 5+ years and their official support recommendation is to "change number or carrier". They offer no other authentication options - not even a credit card. Am I going to pay an extra $50 a month to play your "free" game? No thank you. There are some people who prepaid for their early access content and are now fighting to get their money back on a game they can't even play. What a stupidly anti-customer company. All this for a game that is a glorified patch of the previous one.

klysm 4y ago
Unfortunately I don’t think the economics are in your favor as I assume you are within a small enough segment to make this worth it.
- legitster 4y ago
  Cricket alone has 12 million subscribers in the US. Metro PCS has ~18 million. Boost Mobile has 8 million. You're looking at 30 million+ people who flat out cannot even play the game.
- dbttdft 4y ago
  Yes, but this was something obvious from the outset from an engineering standpoint. I would never consider requiring phone verification for my games. I don't even require an email account as lots of games do (because of cargo cult) these days. The Western software development bubble (largely the demographic of HN) is full of self centered people / ignorant people who have never seen hardware aside from a Mac or a $2K Windows box, who buy a new phone literally every year, who claim to be saving the world. On the contrary what you get is web browsers being too slow to run on hardware of someone who lives outside the West and being banned from the game because outside the West you can't conform to the game's asinine requirements. The irony on top of the irony is that the ones who think of themselves affluent for this are not at all: cell phones and their protocols are badly engineered technology.

madrox 4y ago

The toxicity of random matchmaking has gotten out of hand. Whenever I decide to dive into a game of Overwatch, I'm rolling the dice on whether any of my five teammates will be misanthropes, and the odds are quite high these days. I shouldn't be subjected to that to play a team based game. Your ability to play nice with others should be a data point. To make that a data point, bans need to have teeth. Bad behavior needs to have consequences. We have to disrupt the Internet Fuckward Theory [1]. People who don't like the idea of phone numbers maybe should propose alternatives, because things are not fine the way they are. 1: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/325699-greater-internet-fuckwad-theory https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/325699-greater-internet-fuck...

Havoc 4y ago
> I'm rolling the dice on whether any of my five teammates will be misanthropes, and the odds are quite high these days Really? Out of a 100 players, 7 interact vaguely positively (gg, glhf etc), 3 are salty and the other 90 are silent.
- madrox 4y ago
  Your games are different from mine, it seems
ronsor 4y ago
> People who don't like the idea of phone numbers maybe should propose alternatives, because things are not fine the way they are "There is no alternative" is not an excuse to implement a bad decision, short of a need to physically save lives. Bad actors can get phone numbers for verification stupidly easily, meanwhile privacy continues to be eroded for the sake of stopping them.
- madrox 4y ago
  At one point, I was working at a company where attackers were spamming our service with ToS-violating content (moslty porn but many grotesque, violent stuff). The decision was made to require a phone number on the account to disable the attack. I argued that phone numbers were stupid easy to get and bypass this measure, but we did it anyway. To my complete surprise, the attackers didn't bother the obviously surmountable hurdle of getting burner numbers. Yes, phone numbers aren't perfect, but in practice they're surprisingly effective. I fail to see how privacy can both be eroded while also saying phone numbers are stupidly easy to get and bypass. If you're concerned about the privacy of your phone number, feel free to avail yourself of the same methods the bad actors could use. Burner is a legal app. I think calling this a bad decision is arguable. We hand over phone numbers for MFA all the time. I think this is a perfectly fine decision walking well away from the border of invasiveness, which is why I put the burden on critics to define an alternative.

blibble 4y ago

prior to the separate matchmaker rating per role ("role queue") I had three accounts: - one for support (which I'm pretty good at, main account) - one for DPS (which I'm ok at) - one for tank (which I suck at) why? so I didn't ruin games when I played something other than support I've not used the other 2 accounts since then, but out of curiosity I tried adding phone numbers to their accounts from my pile of free UK SIMs from various providers (my "backup internet" plan) 3/6 networks registered fine (no credit required) quite how they expect this to stop smurfing/hacking if any kid in the UK can pick up 10 free SIMs from a phone shop and get 10 new overwatch accounts

andy_xor_andrew 4y ago

Discussion about Overwatch 2 always makes me feel as if I am living in an alternate universe. Let me paint you a picture of October 2019: In Hong Kong, this is happening, and it's a big deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr... Meanwhile, Overwatch remains an immensely popular arena shooter, with frequent content updates and new characters. The type of game, like Team Fortress 2, that does not see "sequels" per say, but rather an ongoing evolution. The game is 3 years old. What I'm trying to say is, in October 2019, the idea of "Overwatch 2" seems entirely, entirely absurd. Then, on October 6, this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy Not sure if you recall, but this was a HUGE fire-and-pitchfork controversy. #BoycottBlizzard became a real thing. I was among them, permanently cancelling my accounts, because that mattered to me. Again, this was a BIG DEAL. https://www.pcgamer.com/brian-kibler-says-he-will-not-take-part-in-future-hearthstone-grandmasters-streams/ https://www.pcgamer.com/brian-kibler-says-he-will-not-take-p... Less than one month later, Blizzcon 2019 happened. If you remember the atmosphere at that moment, people weren't even sure if BlizzCon would happen at all. It seemed like it may simply be cancelled. And what happened at BlizzCon? Announcing... OVERWATCH 2. The sequel to the popular arena shooter. Will there be new characters? Uh, probably, but definitely there will be reskins! Okay, when's it out? Uh... eventually, one day, TBD! That was 2019. Blizzard announced Overwatch 2 in 2019. The amount of time between that announcement and today is roughly equal to the amount of time between Overwatch 1 being released, and the controversy. Am I insane? Is it not extremely, extremely obvious why Blizzard made the "surprising" move to announce a game that no one expected, and to this day has not been released?

gigaflop 4y ago
As someone who put down Overwatch a while ago, after having actually enjoyed it for a while, I have no desire to pick up OW2. Activision-Blizzard's merger tells me that 'Classic Blizzard' will never again exist, and that I should discard what goodwill I have left towards either publisher. Overwatch's monetization model was not the best (they helped pioneer loot boxes, with no information on odds), and now they're locking new characters behind a Battlepass for OW2. F2P players will be able to unlock the hero eventually, but according to current leaks, competitive modes will lock out players who don't have all characters unlocked. Diablo Immortal is something I've never played, but I've enjoyed listening to some of the drama. After Blizz cracked down on third-party sellers of the game's real-money currency, some people had their Eternal Orb balances go negative(!!!) when they removed the Orbs from their account. With a negative Orb count, players get locked out of participating in some of the game. The only by-the-books way to restore that functionality is to buy more Orbs from the store. One headline you can easily find is a player with over $30k worth of 'Orb Debt', as in, they would need to spend that much money in order to get to a balance of 0. Acti/Blizz's monetization schemes have become more manipulative over time, and as of now, it's leaching into how people can actually play the game. Swipe your credit card, or you're gonna be behind. Another can of worms, which I will label instead of open: Blizzard's recently-unearthed history of sexual harassment in the workplace, and etc etc.

voidwtf 4y ago

I don’t understand how this is controversial. If you’ve ever played a competitive game then you’ve almost certainly encountered an abusive player. I don’t just mean verbally abusive, I mean the player who quits the game, AFKs, or intentionally feeds the enemy team when they don’t get the role they want. Maybe you’ve encountered the player who dodges the match the moment their favorite character is selected. Typically even if the game ended the moment they left, or if there was a vote kick/remake mechanism. You will have lost at least 2-3 minutes of your time, if not the length of an entire match. As a child, maybe this is acceptable, you can just move on to the next match. As an adult who can only set aside enough time for one or two matches it’s devastating. It’s the type of behavior that you the good behaving, rule respecting, team player gets penalized for. When there is no restriction on just creating new accounts, these negative types of players just create a new account after they get banned or penalized and continue being negative players. Increasingly these new accounts are being sold for $0.50 to $3.00, pre made with the tutorial missions completed, so that these negative players can spend a tiny amount of money and jump right into ruining another persons night. I hope all multiplayer games start to add in this type of requirement. Bad behavior should be punished in an enforceable way.

q-big 4y ago
> It’s the type of behavior that you the good behaving, rule respecting, team player gets penalized for. This rather sounds like badly designed scoring rules.
BoorishBears 4y ago
I'm mildly annoyed by it because it really doesn't work. Something you might not realize is in games that require phone numbers > Increasingly these new accounts are being sold for $0.50 to $3.00, This is still true: https://www.playerauctions.com/cod-account/warzone/ https://www.playerauctions.com/cod-account/warzone/ Unfortunately the best deterrent OW 1 has was being paid.
- voidwtf 4y ago
  I’ll respond to this, but I’m also replying to another that noted how cheap phone numbers are. In the beginning, yes, they appear to be cheap. But that doesn’t last very long in my prior experience, the last multiplayer platform I used that used phone number verification blocked several VoIP carriers shortly after they started abusing the ease of getting numbers. This was super effective, overnight games got significantly better. Rinse and repeat, adding region locking of phone region to server region, etc… I know it’s not perfect, but you can’t forgo good for a lack of perfect. Every hoop removes a non-trivial amount of bad actors. I’d rather have one game a week be annoying, then 3 dodges and 1 disconnect nearly every attempt at playing.

ajkjk 4y ago

The segment of HN's readership whose ideology is simply "privacy or bust" are unsurprisingly vehemently opposed to this, but for everyone else this is super reasonable... anything to improve the integrity of the competition so your progression feels fair and meaningful.

JadoJodo 4y ago
This is only necessary because Blizzard decided that IAPs + Free-to-Play (Overwatch 2) was worth more than charging customers outright for a quality product (Overwatch).
- aaomidi 4y ago
  The alternative side is, games are very expensive in a lot of the world. F2P games are one of the only ways a lot more people get to enjoy them.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  It’s becoming almost required to follow this business model. These games live and die on active player count. And the easiest way to get the most players is to lower the barriers to entry. You need to get players in for free and then charge the ones open to paying later with cosmetics.
odessacubbage 4y ago
i can guarantee you that requiring a wired connection for ranked matches would do far more to improve your experience than any kind of blizzard panopticon scheme will.
- ajkjk 4y ago
  That's absurd. Match quality is fine even with people having slightly less than optimal ping. And then you get one troll every few games that just totally ruins it.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

This is bad and will prevent me from buying it. Oh well, more factorio for me I guess. They could tie your account to something else.