[Update #2]: As a small apology for the post-launch problems, Overwatch 2 is giving away a Legendary skin and planning double XP weekends

[Update]: My Overwatch 2 review is now out, and to put it simply it's a terrible sequel, though thankfully a terrific game!

As a part of its anti-cheating and anti-smurfing plan, Overwatch 2 made it so all players must link a phone number to their account in order to play. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in a bit of a mess as some phone carriers throughout the world didn't seem to fit into Blizzard's plans, and so a large swathe of players was left unable to explore Overwatch 2.

In an effort to correct this, at least partially, Blizzard will be removing the phone number requirement for veteran players later today. What this means is that any Overwatch player with a connected BattleNet account, and this includes everyone who played since June 9, 2021, will be able to simply dive into Overwatch 2 without having to do anything else.

Blizzard is also working on solving some of the problems players encountered with the whole SMS Protect system, though no concrete details have been given just yet. So if you're a new player and your phone number unfortunately doesn't seem to work with the new system, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait for a little while longer.

The final thing worth mentioning is that Blizzard is currently in the process of sorting out the login queues and improving server stability. Once the fix goes live you can expect to see drastically shorter queue times, as well as much more stable servers during prime time.

Once Blizzard announces the next big update I'll make sure to let you know. Until then you can read a little bit more about what they're working on over at the official website. Enjoy!