To ensure the fairness of the game and promote positive behavior, Overwatch 2, which will open for play on our side at 3am on October 5th, will introduce a new “Protection Field” program. It covers SMS protection and system design. The former requires players on all platforms to bind a mobile phone number to their battle.net account before launching the game. The same number cannot be used for multiple accounts, and players are not allowed to use prepaid card numbers and VOIP. When enabled, SMS protection will verify whether the login user is the account owner. After the player who interferes with other people’s experience is temporarily suspended or permanently frozen, SMS protection can also ensure that they cannot log in to the game.
Blizzard believes that this solution, which “passes the industry’s practical application test”, can effectively combat cheating and experience interference behaviors, and can bring meaningful changes to “Battle Strike 2”. At the same time, the new work will also incorporate machine learning to detect and avoid interference and cheating, and will add a voice-to-text function to improve the efficiency of identifying reported content. According to the official statement, after temporarily obtaining the reported player’s recording file, the system will convert it into a verbatim transcript. After that, the recording file will be deleted, and the corresponding transcript will only be retained for a maximum of 30 days.
It’s worth mentioning that “Battle Strike 2” will remove the general chat room in the game, because it is prone to intrusive behavior and “doesn’t have any productive effect.” While announcing the content of the new work “Protection Field”, Blizzard also reminded everyone that the existing “Battle Strike” will be closed from the early morning of October 4th. In other words, October 3rd is your “last chance to spend a whole day looking back.” Don’t forget it, old players.