Blizzard gives Overwatch players free pass on phone verification for Overwatch 2

Blizzard's Overwatch 2 game faces multiple issues two days after launch

Game publisher Blizzard will give Overwatch 1 players a pass on phone verification for the new entry, the revamped and free-to-play game Overwatch 2, after many players complained about the SMS Protect system.

The new game experienced issues with connections, SMS Protect, long queues for entry, players stuck at the loading screen, and more. The company said it was also scaling up the nodes in its player database to handle the incoming number of players.

The SMS Protect system installed in the game was also causing issues with players who had to have a registered postpaid phone number.

The Verge notes that the phone restriction might cause issues for many players since not everyone may have a postpaid number that Blizzard approves of.

Players have also found much of their information missing once they logged in to their account, like play history and other associated data. While Blizzard says it's working to fix the issue, the data from the two games don't seem to have merged with the launch of the new game.

"In all cases, no player data has been wiped or lost. We have a client-side fix for this that cannot be deployed until next week, so we are exploring server-side fixes and will provide updates as more information becomes available," said the game developer.

The company has already rolled out a UI fix for console players to get their prompt to merge their accounts.