For those trying to login to Overwatch 2 for the first time, be it for new players or veterans alike, you’ll be greeted with Blizzard’s phone number message requirement that the studio calls “SMS Protect,” which has been implemented to prevent toxicity and cheaters. Unfortunately, this Overwatch 2 SMS Protect requirement has also locked out legit players from accessing the game too!

In a new update posted by Blizzard, the studio has announced that SMS Protect will no longer be required for gamers who have played since June 9, 2021! This will take effect later this week on October 7 on all platforms.

Overwatch 2 SMS Protect Requirement Lifted:

We designed Overwatch 2 to be a live service, which enables us to be responsive to a variety of player feedback. 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. We will update players once it is in effect.

SMS Protect is part of Blizzard’s “Defense Matrix” imitative to combat cheaters and toxicity in the game.

In addition to that, the studio has apologized for the long queue times, server crashes and stability issues the game is currently suffering through. As one might expect given the game has gone full-on free-to-play, servers are being overloaded, and the fact that they are also being attacked isn’t helping things either.

Queue Issues, Server Crashes and Stability Acknowledgement:

Tl;dr: We have addressed some issues and are in the process of addressing others, but players should still expect to see queues.

Login queues, server crashes, and stability problems are intertwined, so we’ll talk about them together. Players may have been seeing their queue numbers jumping around, going from a small number to a larger number. This is due to there being two queues for players—one through Battle.net, then one through the game itself. This process is usually invisible to players, but was being seen in real time. We have made changes to simplify the queuing process, so players should now only be experiencing the one queue before entering the game.

There are several areas where we’re working to improve stability. Today we’ve patched a server that is critical to the login experience, and this change has increased login reliability. Beyond queues, we’re in progress with another server update that will reduce the occurrences of players being disconnected once they’re already in game.

Blizzard has also acknowledged issues with missing player items and data as well, and assures players that their progress and items are still there. In half of the cases being reported, it’s just a matter of the original items from Overwatch 1 taking longer to be transferred to OW2.

Player Missing Items and Data:

Tl;dr: You have not lost any items or progress, though some players are logging in and seeing some/all elements missing from their collection.

We’ve received a number of reports from players that their inventory in-game is partially or totally reset. We’ve determined that the cause for this discrepancy in approximately half of reported cases is players having not yet completed their account merge 9.1k. This is understandable—one cause for this is due to a bug with the launch build not providing an account merge prompt on some consoles. We rolled out a partial UI fix earlier today to help some console players progress through the account merge flow, however, we are still working on fixes for additional UI issues.

In the other half of reported cases for this issue, things are just taking longer than expected for items from the original Overwatch to transfer and populate in Overwatch 2. 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.

Finally, the studio addressed concerns regarding locked heroes and items for existing players too. This issue is separate from the missing items/data issue, and it seems relogging will fix it.

Incorrect Locked Heroes and Items for Existing Players:

This is an issue separate from account merge but the player experience is the same as the above, where heroes and items that should be unlocked for existing players are appearing as locked. These cases are almost certainly related to our new First Time User Experience (FTUE) flow incorrectly being applied to existing players. We have seen relogging into the game resolve this issue in most cases. If you’re still experiencing this issue after taking these steps, please open a support ticket 3.8k, that data is very helpful for our team.

Hopefully, these issues are resolved soon, so players can deal with the actual game rather than issues.

Source: Blizzard forums