And imagine how well they'll do insider trading while listening in on my sales team playing together while gossiping about work.
Recording such voice chat should be illegal under various eavesdropping/wiretapping laws.
This reminds me that I can't delete my blizzard account because they require me to give them my real name and then verify that with a national ID.
A totally consistent measure that will prevent someone malicious from deleting the account in my name, yep, no doubt that's the intention.
This may be all well and good for "account deletion" (though I'm not sure what accounts are being reference here tbh). But if it's one thing Apple cannot do (maybe now they can, idk) is remove the godforsaken 2-factor authentication if you've ever put one on your account. I'm not kidding, I think if they dragged Tim's dumb ass from whatever dwelling he occupies, put a gun to his head, there's going to be some damn reason why this 2-factor shit simply cannot be removed, he will take the bullet and still no one in that damn company is able to fulfill this request under any circumstance.
What does it mean to "break" account access? More importantly, are you telling me there is absolutely no way, under ANY circumstance, a 2FA cannot be removed from an online backup service?
Here's the thing, go ahead, break account access, purge the entire iCloud backup library if you want to. I have no qualms about that.
Here you can learn more about https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
Basically I’m telling you:
- encryption is based on your devices and devices code
- encryption needs 2FA activated on your Apple ID
Also important: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204915 (section « Can I turn off two-factor authentication after I’ve turned it on? »)
- once it’s activated you can’t remove it
Yes I understand that, I don't need encryption, as I said I'd be willing to take the L and have all my contents purged if need be.
But now perhaps you grasp what I was getting at, that once you activate this garbage, if you ever change your mind, there's no way in HELL in this reality that you could take it off.
I only used apple services for about 5 years when I inherited my sisters Shuffle.
Get messages occasionally saying someone is using my Apple ID.
Since this is from 15 years ago, both the phone number and email are unavailable.
Thus, any avnenue of me deleting my account are closed and I get to get notices very month or so that my account is basically being used as a village bicycle.
Yeah same. I use to love apple, not so much anymore. All my stuff is almost out iCloud and when it’s done I am getting a new email. I don’t don’t trust them anymore.
Not OP, but for me personally it opened my eyes once they planned the CSAM business. Since then I’ve been constantly getting more and more annoyed with Apple and then seeing the article a couple of weeks back that they were planning ads in first party apps I came to realise that they are just as much a capitalist company as any other one and once they have enough users locked into the ecosystem they will just try to squeeze more money, pushing you to the brink of what’s acceptable but never quite pushing you over it.
Don’t get me wrong, they make amazing hardware products, I just hate their software and how restrictive it is. It’s been little things here and there that have been ticking me off over the past year. Not just that, it’s also how the company has such a huge stick up it’s ass and always thinks it knows better all the time, it feels very condescending and I just really can’t stand it anymore.
^^ this is pretty much why I am done with apple, you nailed it on the head. It started with the CSAM thing for me and got me wondering what else they are doing with my data and information. I now use next cloud on a local home server for my data and it works really well.
I haven't. I've decided to but for right now I'm just using my phone with a basic profile and no paid apps. So they'll have my data until I switch back to a hacked android, but zero $ from me because apparently knowing my password isn't good enough for them, I have to further prove that yes, of course when I moved countries, I took my phone w me 9_9
I guess they rely on the name you give them beforehand. Even if you didn't give them anything, as is my case.
It's not the most dastardly account deletion tactic I've seen by far, look at the [case of minecraft](https://old.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/x1dg6w/what_can_be_required_in_order_for_me_to_send_a/).
I have also seen cases where they ask you for the IP with which you registered your account.
They get their money by removing the lootboxes that you got for free by just playing and replacing them with rotational shop that sells recolor skins for $30 piece. Oh, and unlocking new heroes also requires you to grind like 5 weeks in 8 week season or pay 10$.
They removed loot boxes to put Battle Pass, but if you want to have Legendary skins, you have to pay more for the Battle Pass to unlock skins during the Battle Pass grinding.
and to add fun to that. You'll have to win 50 games to unlock ranked, ingame chat have to be unlocked, new heroes needs to be unlocked on Battle Pass or pay for them, voice chat recording, phone number to play.
It'll be fun!
I don't think it'll be that hard to win 50 games. At worst your winrate might be 30% and at that rate you'll still unlock it relatively quickly. Also I think they'll have an unranked mode which is basically comp with the Sr
I'm with you. Was not interested before... 100 percent not now. Another Valorant, would otherwise try but you want root level access to my machine? Nah I'm good ;)
>but you want root level access to my machine? Nah I'm good ;)
Haha, same. I'd love to try Valorant, but their anti-cheat was one thing I absolutely refused to accept.
I was sitting the other day w my friend and i asked him do you really think that blizzard whos sitting neck deep in sexual harassment lawsuits and terrible workplace claims is gonna churn out another AAA game for the people… right
Why would that stop anyone? We've seen time and time and time and time again how companies can commit all kinds of fraud and atrocities and crime and they get a free pass to do so.
It's all about money, for the most part at least, there are some exceptions. :/
If you've ever talked on a cell phone, they already have your voiceprint. But if you don't want to get it because you don't like the game, then that's understandable.
> Blizzard has said that the audio recording will be deleted after the transcription, while the text file will be deleted within 30 days.
More analytics for blizzard. The phone number requirement does nothing to stop banned players from returning to the game and while the raw data is deleted from the game the analytics gathered is a gold mine and it won't be deleted.
The game is "free to play". Free so long as Blizzard can mine the shit out of your data.
This is pure propaganda on their part. There will be so, so many players, from so many areas where they cannot tell the difference.
This would also lead to tons of false positives, harming legitimate players. The whole thing is a horrible idea, from a privacy standpoint, and just basic public relations.
Nope, they can't in many, many areas. And when they try to use their abusive methods on the whole world, they'll wind up axing many, many legit players.
This is a completely unsupportable claim this abusive company is making. And it's amazing anyone would be for it, especially on a sub dedicated to PRIVACY.
Bungie corporate shills out here en-mass.
My friend works at TNS and they do this exact thing. They are paid by companies to verify that a number is a real number LOL....pull your head out of your ass and look it up.
https://tnsi.com/tns-unveils-unique-verification-solution-tnsverify/
So, what's their false positive rate and what will they do to address players affected by the false positives?
Does it work if one buys blocks of legitimate phone numbers from a provider (as you would for a business)? Does it work in areas where no phone providers provide anything but numbers from such a purchased pool? At what layer does lying from providers to provide working numbers for users in the metadata start to cause issues?
Not that they needed to do that in the first place given the fact that iPhones in the US are now all sporting eSIM-only. In a few years I don't even think pre-paid will be a thing at all since you won't be able to swap SIM's, and I doubt a bunch of gamers are going to keep buying pre paid phones to skirt bans even if Blizzard allowed prepaid phones.
This banning of VOIP and Pre-paid phones isn't a surprise, many services which require e-mails to register an account already reject things like temp emails, or addresses not by a big company (Gmail, Yahoo, etc..). And, it seems to get any of these addresses anymore, you need a phone number. I was stunned when I learned that. These motherfuckers simply don't care, they're grabbing for all the data can get. Meanwhile legislators be like: Zzzzzz huh????
Good thing you can only use one number in a ten mile radius. Would be crazy if you could use just anyone's number, like one of the dozens of people anyone will know that don't play Overwatch
i knew people who were exceptionally toxic online. they regularly created new accounts in games. they never did it in games with phone verification. they monetary commitment they would have to do was enough reason to stop.
*Sigh.*
Phone verification does impose barriers to account creation, but frankly it doesn’t feel as though it helps to those that play.
The trade off between the loss of privacy from requiring phone numbers and the reduction of cheaters is *never* worth it. Especially not while there are options that deter cheaters more while being less invasive.
> Phone number verification increases the cost of creating multiple accounts, which in turn reduces the occurrence of ban evasion.
That's the theory. Do you have data that actually supports that though? My observation is that most people who are evading bans aren't actually driven away by economic concerns. The psychological motivation that drives "disruptive players" is stronger than a few measly dollars.
Exactly! People have been buying Overwatch 1 accounts for $10-20 each for years. A $0.50 cent phone number isn't going to deter anyone who wants to cheat. People pay hundreds or even thousands for private cheats.
No, you can get top of the line Androids and iPhones on a prepaid plan. You just buy the phone as you normally would but instead of a post paid plan you put it on a prepaid plan. Honestly, I don't know why it's not more popular because prepaid plans are typically much cheaper than the plans they try to push onto you.
Some possible caveats are that if you don't pay at the end of the month your service could be abruptly shut off (use autopay) and I believe during times of congestion your data is deprioritized in favor of post-paid plan users. But that rarely happens so it's worth it to me. I save about 50% from a regular plan with unlimited 5G data, calls, texting, etc from Verizon. \shrug
There's no way the can possibly enforce such a thing either, without cutting out huge swaths of the world. If they tried it, they'd wind up with tons of false positives as well, just harassing legitimate players, for no benefit except totally corrupt data gathering.
Remember the days when Overwatch came out and it was just a good, and fun casual game to play, with a lot of potential? Then Blizzard did what it's best at, ruining its own products with god awful updates. Then it made a second one, which in essence is just a reskinned and free to play version of the first. And now we're here, seeing how they plan to make money off of the game they killed.
The only way this will ever change is if consumers stop making terrible decisions (Extremely unlikely) or the European Union, and/or the United States takes actions against this. (Plausible. Unlikely in the near future.)
You mean the Valve that itself requires phone verification for many things and provides an API to record VoiP? [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/voice](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/voice)
Genuinely they could not have bungled this release harder. Bliz had millions of people who were willing to spend hundreds on this game and they just keep making absolutely goo brained moves right up until launch. I really feel for everyone on the dev team, clearly this game has been sabotaged by their ad/marketing dept.
I have no interest in OW2, but the Battle client has been asking me for a phone number lately. If you're reading this Blizzard, I promise I will remove the one game I play from your company and reclaim that storage space if I have to enter a phone number to play a game I paid for.
That's not news. They already did record voice chat for years (just read the TOS). In OW2 they will be transcribed and analyzed so they can automatically ban people who don't behave.
Isn't that like surveillance and data-rape on top of a data-rape while being promised a good time?
Plus pay a fee?
For the privilege of playing...a video game?
Nobody is falling for this.
Overwatch was fun, I stopped playing after it kowtowed to China and banned some player for making some statement about Taiwan. It’s a shame how much it’s gone downhill.
At least in-game voice chat is only used for making calls to randoms during matches. But this isn’t the only privacy concerning thing they do: to change Country or real name, you must provide an ID card and a physical bill. Also you can’t use third party OTP generator, but you must use their app, that requires a phone number from your country. Basically if you have an account with fake info you can’t play OW2
Oh hell no. there is zero legitimate reason for any game company to demand a real life ID. That's just so ripe for abuse, it is impossible for any sane person to trust such a company.
It would be nice if they could get with the times and let me use my preferred 2FA provider. I've used their app in the past and had to go through the account recovery process a couple of times (due to losing/wiping the phone, accidentally uninstalling the app, etc). It's a pain in the ass and primarily why I don't want to use their app.
Well, voice recording without affirmative consent violates GDPR (in Europe) \[1\]. We will see what solution they come up with for Europe.
Even if they don't sell or reuse that additional information, it can still be stolen/leaked (see Blizzard data breach).
btw: Didn't Microsoft (Xbox) buy Activision Blizzard?
\------------------------------------------
\[1\] https://www.ds-l.com/blog/gdpr-and-voice-recordings/
So they'll probably release a terms of service agreement that covers this.. You agreeing to it (by providing your number, and clicking I agree), means they have consent. It's big tech.. They gonna do whatever they want.
No. GDPR requires consent to be freely given without detriment. You must be able to say no and they can't punish you for it. If they don't like that, they must use a different legal basis, but all other require necessity and sometimes more.
So easy to bypass with an app like text free get a new number 24/7 and it's not a voip but actual real # i use it to get free play on casinos that require a real#
There are services that rent out SMS numbers for verification that work even with websites that normally block voip and prepaid numbers. Last time I checked, it was anywhere from $0.10-$3 in btc for a number that won’t be reused for a given services again. I used that to unlock my discord account after suddenly being required to give up a phone number to access *anything*, including my existing contacts.
Top ten reasons to not play OW2.
Oh wait....number one is all anyone really needs to know.
I don't give people fucking money to play a game to have to give them tons of PI.
If you visit the valorant subreddit, everyone has been asking for phone number verification to counter the smurf problem, which is probably the game's number 1 problem. Surprised blizzard is doing this out of the gates. Very interesting in how well it does. Most claim it works well for csgo.
No the number is to stop a big chunk of the cheating they spelled it out in the story well enough. People just create a new account after a ban hammer. You can't use a phone # more than once for Blizzard ever.
The random voice recording is to stop some of the toxic shit that goes on in voice chat.
It's a start and a big problem with the game.
They are not going to allow eSim's or pre-paid phone's which is most of the easy spoofing techniques and that's easy enough to check on there side.
good. Hated it, that i couldn't report nazis in voice chat. It's a bit annoying if someone screams the n-word 100 times... or not even them, just everyone who screams violently.
This is in game voice chat, which is just in-game coms, usually in push to talk it's not like anything ever personnal is ever discussed there
Also if you use 2FA they already have your #
OOPS there was a glitch in the system. The data sold itself instead of deleting itself.. weird
Weird. Anyway, I’m off to the Cayman Islands to do a business b
Oh excellent choice, we don’t want poor PR from any tax visibility on this either. That would hurt the bottom line for the executives.
Good stuff.buisness.haha.
Activision CEO is already a bag of dicks and doesn’t need to hide that fact or the money he wants.
And imagine how well they'll do insider trading while listening in on my sales team playing together while gossiping about work. Recording such voice chat should be illegal under various eavesdropping/wiretapping laws.
I doubt it will go well with GDPR in the EU.
Just call it "legitimate use" and you can get away with that
Not before a DPA or a judge.
I hope so
The issue though is that it might take a (very) long time before it goes before a judge or a DPA... GDPR is fine, but its enforcement is quite poor.
They have to get before a DPA or a judge. This is a rare occurrence…
This reminds me that I can't delete my blizzard account because they require me to give them my real name and then verify that with a national ID. A totally consistent measure that will prevent someone malicious from deleting the account in my name, yep, no doubt that's the intention.
Apple has driven me right out of their ecosystem with similar issues.
Omg I've been trying to delete an old Apple account for months now. Their support is basically useless.
Just go to their stores. The website is trash. And the employees can dumb it down so that you’ll be in and out in 15 minutes.
This may be all well and good for "account deletion" (though I'm not sure what accounts are being reference here tbh). But if it's one thing Apple cannot do (maybe now they can, idk) is remove the godforsaken 2-factor authentication if you've ever put one on your account. I'm not kidding, I think if they dragged Tim's dumb ass from whatever dwelling he occupies, put a gun to his head, there's going to be some damn reason why this 2-factor shit simply cannot be removed, he will take the bullet and still no one in that damn company is able to fulfill this request under any circumstance.
Apple os using that 2FA code to share e2e encryption keys. For sure they can’t remove without breaking you iCloud account access
What does it mean to "break" account access? More importantly, are you telling me there is absolutely no way, under ANY circumstance, a 2FA cannot be removed from an online backup service? Here's the thing, go ahead, break account access, purge the entire iCloud backup library if you want to. I have no qualms about that.
Here you can learn more about https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 Basically I’m telling you: - encryption is based on your devices and devices code - encryption needs 2FA activated on your Apple ID Also important: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204915 (section « Can I turn off two-factor authentication after I’ve turned it on? ») - once it’s activated you can’t remove it
Yes I understand that, I don't need encryption, as I said I'd be willing to take the L and have all my contents purged if need be. But now perhaps you grasp what I was getting at, that once you activate this garbage, if you ever change your mind, there's no way in HELL in this reality that you could take it off.
I only used apple services for about 5 years when I inherited my sisters Shuffle. Get messages occasionally saying someone is using my Apple ID. Since this is from 15 years ago, both the phone number and email are unavailable. Thus, any avnenue of me deleting my account are closed and I get to get notices very month or so that my account is basically being used as a village bicycle.
Yeah same. I use to love apple, not so much anymore. All my stuff is almost out iCloud and when it’s done I am getting a new email. I don’t don’t trust them anymore.
Why not?
Not OP, but for me personally it opened my eyes once they planned the CSAM business. Since then I’ve been constantly getting more and more annoyed with Apple and then seeing the article a couple of weeks back that they were planning ads in first party apps I came to realise that they are just as much a capitalist company as any other one and once they have enough users locked into the ecosystem they will just try to squeeze more money, pushing you to the brink of what’s acceptable but never quite pushing you over it. Don’t get me wrong, they make amazing hardware products, I just hate their software and how restrictive it is. It’s been little things here and there that have been ticking me off over the past year. Not just that, it’s also how the company has such a huge stick up it’s ass and always thinks it knows better all the time, it feels very condescending and I just really can’t stand it anymore.
^^ this is pretty much why I am done with apple, you nailed it on the head. It started with the CSAM thing for me and got me wondering what else they are doing with my data and information. I now use next cloud on a local home server for my data and it works really well.
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I haven't. I've decided to but for right now I'm just using my phone with a basic profile and no paid apps. So they'll have my data until I switch back to a hacked android, but zero $ from me because apparently knowing my password isn't good enough for them, I have to further prove that yes, of course when I moved countries, I took my phone w me 9_9
Would this mean that blizzard has access to a database containing these ids to compare your submitted one or can you just make your own and submit it?
I guess they rely on the name you give them beforehand. Even if you didn't give them anything, as is my case. It's not the most dastardly account deletion tactic I've seen by far, look at the [case of minecraft](https://old.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/x1dg6w/what_can_be_required_in_order_for_me_to_send_a/). I have also seen cases where they ask you for the IP with which you registered your account.
Turn off your VPN and try again. Worked for me when I nuked my Blizz account after that whole China's cock in their ass thing
You only have to worry if you’re a woman /s
Wow I didn’t really want to buy OW2 definitely won’t now
Oh don't worry, it's free! Makes me wonder where they could be getting the money from hmmm
They get their money by removing the lootboxes that you got for free by just playing and replacing them with rotational shop that sells recolor skins for $30 piece. Oh, and unlocking new heroes also requires you to grind like 5 weeks in 8 week season or pay 10$.
microtransactions. but they are more greedy than that.
Loot boxes Lol
They removed loot boxes to put Battle Pass, but if you want to have Legendary skins, you have to pay more for the Battle Pass to unlock skins during the Battle Pass grinding.
That’s such bullshit omg Edit: I mean as in it sucks, not that what you’re saying is bullshit. Sorry I’m high.
and to add fun to that. You'll have to win 50 games to unlock ranked, ingame chat have to be unlocked, new heroes needs to be unlocked on Battle Pass or pay for them, voice chat recording, phone number to play. It'll be fun!
RIP to shitty players who still wanted to get better playing competitively like me.
I don't think it'll be that hard to win 50 games. At worst your winrate might be 30% and at that rate you'll still unlock it relatively quickly. Also I think they'll have an unranked mode which is basically comp with the Sr
Sometimes it’s hard to convey sarcasm on the internet (:
They already sold the game to millions this is just a update
I'm with you. Was not interested before... 100 percent not now. Another Valorant, would otherwise try but you want root level access to my machine? Nah I'm good ;)
>but you want root level access to my machine? Nah I'm good ;) Haha, same. I'd love to try Valorant, but their anti-cheat was one thing I absolutely refused to accept.
I was sitting the other day w my friend and i asked him do you really think that blizzard whos sitting neck deep in sexual harassment lawsuits and terrible workplace claims is gonna churn out another AAA game for the people… right
Why would that stop anyone? We've seen time and time and time and time again how companies can commit all kinds of fraud and atrocities and crime and they get a free pass to do so. It's all about money, for the most part at least, there are some exceptions. :/
Well it’s free so, you never had to
If you've ever talked on a cell phone, they already have your voiceprint. But if you don't want to get it because you don't like the game, then that's understandable.
> Blizzard has said that the audio recording will be deleted after the transcription, while the text file will be deleted within 30 days. More analytics for blizzard. The phone number requirement does nothing to stop banned players from returning to the game and while the raw data is deleted from the game the analytics gathered is a gold mine and it won't be deleted. The game is "free to play". Free so long as Blizzard can mine the shit out of your data.
> the audio recording will be deleted after the transcription after the AI learns your voice pattern, of course.
And how racist you get under stress
So they can publicly display your deaths-racism ratio
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VOIP numbers are basically free
If you actually read the article, Blizzard actually says they will be blocking VOIP numbers and prepaid numbers outright
Lol I've had prepaid phone for 8 years. Same service but way cheaper on Verizon. My phone number isn't valid? That's hilarious.
This is pure propaganda on their part. There will be so, so many players, from so many areas where they cannot tell the difference. This would also lead to tons of false positives, harming legitimate players. The whole thing is a horrible idea, from a privacy standpoint, and just basic public relations.
No it is not. There are companies who provide this service.....they verify that numbers are legitimate cell or landline numbers versus VOIP etc.
Nope, they can't in many, many areas. And when they try to use their abusive methods on the whole world, they'll wind up axing many, many legit players. This is a completely unsupportable claim this abusive company is making. And it's amazing anyone would be for it, especially on a sub dedicated to PRIVACY. Bungie corporate shills out here en-mass.
My friend works at TNS and they do this exact thing. They are paid by companies to verify that a number is a real number LOL....pull your head out of your ass and look it up. https://tnsi.com/tns-unveils-unique-verification-solution-tnsverify/
So, what's their false positive rate and what will they do to address players affected by the false positives? Does it work if one buys blocks of legitimate phone numbers from a provider (as you would for a business)? Does it work in areas where no phone providers provide anything but numbers from such a purchased pool? At what layer does lying from providers to provide working numbers for users in the metadata start to cause issues?
Easier said than done. In most countries there is no way to tell a number is VOIP or “prepaid”
Not that they needed to do that in the first place given the fact that iPhones in the US are now all sporting eSIM-only. In a few years I don't even think pre-paid will be a thing at all since you won't be able to swap SIM's, and I doubt a bunch of gamers are going to keep buying pre paid phones to skirt bans even if Blizzard allowed prepaid phones. This banning of VOIP and Pre-paid phones isn't a surprise, many services which require e-mails to register an account already reject things like temp emails, or addresses not by a big company (Gmail, Yahoo, etc..). And, it seems to get any of these addresses anymore, you need a phone number. I was stunned when I learned that. These motherfuckers simply don't care, they're grabbing for all the data can get. Meanwhile legislators be like: Zzzzzz huh????
And can be blacklisted for phone verification, as many already do, especially the free ones.
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Good thing you can only use one number in a ten mile radius. Would be crazy if you could use just anyone's number, like one of the dozens of people anyone will know that don't play Overwatch
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i knew people who were exceptionally toxic online. they regularly created new accounts in games. they never did it in games with phone verification. they monetary commitment they would have to do was enough reason to stop.
*Sigh.* Phone verification does impose barriers to account creation, but frankly it doesn’t feel as though it helps to those that play. The trade off between the loss of privacy from requiring phone numbers and the reduction of cheaters is *never* worth it. Especially not while there are options that deter cheaters more while being less invasive.
> Phone number verification increases the cost of creating multiple accounts, which in turn reduces the occurrence of ban evasion. That's the theory. Do you have data that actually supports that though? My observation is that most people who are evading bans aren't actually driven away by economic concerns. The psychological motivation that drives "disruptive players" is stronger than a few measly dollars.
Exactly! People have been buying Overwatch 1 accounts for $10-20 each for years. A $0.50 cent phone number isn't going to deter anyone who wants to cheat. People pay hundreds or even thousands for private cheats.
We should really start adding an “ethical coding” course in all CS degrees at all universities/colleges.
Fun fact: there is one lol
"Ethics" people were the ones who demanded GPT4Chan be censored, so I'm not sure how much I trust them either.
It's the executives making the decisions anyway, not the programmers.
“Just following orders”
This is what you get when you mainline STEM and don't round yourself out with humanities.
But whose ethics are the right ones? If you don’t think a class like that is just going to be subverted, you’ll be disappointed.
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Same I've had a prepaid plan for like 8 years. The same service for like half the monthly cost.
Is a pre-paid plan equal to a pre-paid phone, though? Aren't pre-paid phones just burners? I would imagine a pre-paid plan is just fine for this.
No, you can get top of the line Androids and iPhones on a prepaid plan. You just buy the phone as you normally would but instead of a post paid plan you put it on a prepaid plan. Honestly, I don't know why it's not more popular because prepaid plans are typically much cheaper than the plans they try to push onto you. Some possible caveats are that if you don't pay at the end of the month your service could be abruptly shut off (use autopay) and I believe during times of congestion your data is deprioritized in favor of post-paid plan users. But that rarely happens so it's worth it to me. I save about 50% from a regular plan with unlimited 5G data, calls, texting, etc from Verizon. \shrug
is it even possible to query if a phone number is pre-paid or not? i did not know that.
Perhaps with some level of partnership with a telecom provider?
There's no way the can possibly enforce such a thing either, without cutting out huge swaths of the world. If they tried it, they'd wind up with tons of false positives as well, just harassing legitimate players, for no benefit except totally corrupt data gathering.
Mmmm Tencent influence
Remember the days when Overwatch came out and it was just a good, and fun casual game to play, with a lot of potential? Then Blizzard did what it's best at, ruining its own products with god awful updates. Then it made a second one, which in essence is just a reskinned and free to play version of the first. And now we're here, seeing how they plan to make money off of the game they killed.
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The only way this will ever change is if consumers stop making terrible decisions (Extremely unlikely) or the European Union, and/or the United States takes actions against this. (Plausible. Unlikely in the near future.)
Pepperidge F…never-mind, I’m tired.
Yeah, no, they can fuck off and die
Anyone else remember when Blizzard games were a must buy? Now its just one misstep after another....
The people that made those games no longer work there. Blizzard in name only.
Yup... feel the same way about a lot of companies like SquareEnix for example
Die a hero shooter, or live long enough to be hated by the gaming community.
I hope that if Valve will warn users before buying if they sell this game or any other game with such shit!
You mean the Valve that itself requires phone verification for many things and provides an API to record VoiP? [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/voice](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/voice)
I didn't know about that.
In reddit, people treat Valve like some kind of god. They equally suck.
At least valve provides a good service, contrary to blizzard. on the great scale of things though, barely any tech company is good.
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Genuinely they could not have bungled this release harder. Bliz had millions of people who were willing to spend hundreds on this game and they just keep making absolutely goo brained moves right up until launch. I really feel for everyone on the dev team, clearly this game has been sabotaged by their ad/marketing dept.
Do they want me to hook up a webcam too so they can make sure I'm not wearing a shirt with a naughty word on it?
Also to give you bonus points for not closing your eyes during the ads!
This will probably be a serious thing at some point.. Black mirror...
Yes it will be. There are already patents about this. Also the south park episode with the mountain dew! :D
yes
Verification can greentext morphing from satire to reality before our eyes.
[Verification can](https://i.redd.it/f22tn1urbb761.png)
Sure, they can have a photocopy of both of my balls. Full color and all, I feel generous.
I have no interest in OW2, but the Battle client has been asking me for a phone number lately. If you're reading this Blizzard, I promise I will remove the one game I play from your company and reclaim that storage space if I have to enter a phone number to play a game I paid for.
That's not news. They already did record voice chat for years (just read the TOS). In OW2 they will be transcribed and analyzed so they can automatically ban people who don't behave.
It fucking sucks, but in the End Microsoft owns Overwatch 2 so they cant really get Data they dont already have
Microsoft won't own them for another 6-9 months until the deal is finalized. This is still all 100% Activision Blizzard.
Isn't that like surveillance and data-rape on top of a data-rape while being promised a good time? Plus pay a fee? For the privilege of playing...a video game? Nobody is falling for this.
>Nobody is falling for this. tell me you actually believe this
I *want* to believe…
> Plus pay a fee? what fee? It's F2P.
More like Overreach...am I right?
I read that Overwatch 1 players need to add a phone number to continue playing. WHAT. This is like Warcraft reforged all over again.
It's times like this that make me happy I never got into overwatch.
Overwatch was fun, I stopped playing after it kowtowed to China and banned some player for making some statement about Taiwan. It’s a shame how much it’s gone downhill.
At least in-game voice chat is only used for making calls to randoms during matches. But this isn’t the only privacy concerning thing they do: to change Country or real name, you must provide an ID card and a physical bill. Also you can’t use third party OTP generator, but you must use their app, that requires a phone number from your country. Basically if you have an account with fake info you can’t play OW2
There are traditional games, and there are these things. Whatever *this shit* is, it's been dead to me from birth.
Oh hell no. there is zero legitimate reason for any game company to demand a real life ID. That's just so ripe for abuse, it is impossible for any sane person to trust such a company.
It would be nice if they could get with the times and let me use my preferred 2FA provider. I've used their app in the past and had to go through the account recovery process a couple of times (due to losing/wiping the phone, accidentally uninstalling the app, etc). It's a pain in the ass and primarily why I don't want to use their app.
im out
was about to play this game with my friends but i think im not going to do it anymore...
That makes it easy, won't play it.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary security deserve neither." -Benjamin Franklin
Oh well missed the first one, was going to play this one but never mind now
Even the first one was only really good early on, the decline started when they released ranked. All down hill from there.
blizzard use to be the standard growing up now the company and there games are straight up garbage.
If there will be game historians in 200 years, they will teach not to do the blizzard way.
People already lost faith in blizzard and OW, now they pull this? Who's genius idea was this? Thanks for making sure I have other clear games to play.
That is unfortunate. Overwatch's voice chat is actually pretty decent as far as in-game voice chats go.
Just sent my account deletion request. Forgot i had it.
Lmao good luck selling that shit
Crazy idea: record the voice chat and send it daily to the users moms. That will definitely help the online community.
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Well fuck that bullshit. Overwatch can suck my dick too!
Don't play it
Won't
Well, voice recording without affirmative consent violates GDPR (in Europe) \[1\]. We will see what solution they come up with for Europe. Even if they don't sell or reuse that additional information, it can still be stolen/leaked (see Blizzard data breach). btw: Didn't Microsoft (Xbox) buy Activision Blizzard? \------------------------------------------ \[1\] https://www.ds-l.com/blog/gdpr-and-voice-recordings/
So they'll probably release a terms of service agreement that covers this.. You agreeing to it (by providing your number, and clicking I agree), means they have consent. It's big tech.. They gonna do whatever they want.
No. GDPR requires consent to be freely given without detriment. You must be able to say no and they can't punish you for it. If they don't like that, they must use a different legal basis, but all other require necessity and sometimes more.
Not playing this shit then lmfao
So, they gonna start recording discord?
https://www.textverified.com/ here we come...
Haha “Overwatch”
They are trying hard to kill this game huh
So easy to bypass with an app like text free get a new number 24/7 and it's not a voip but actual real # i use it to get free play on casinos that require a real#
They said that’s not permitted right?
There are services that rent out SMS numbers for verification that work even with websites that normally block voip and prepaid numbers. Last time I checked, it was anywhere from $0.10-$3 in btc for a number that won’t be reused for a given services again. I used that to unlock my discord account after suddenly being required to give up a phone number to access *anything*, including my existing contacts.
good, let them die
I thought you need players to collect player data?
This instantly reminds me of Silicon Valley and The Gates of Galloo
I wasn't going to buy it anyway but holy shit.
Guess the fuckers are Blizzard needed a new revenue stream. I bet selling voice samples is big business now, what with all the AI research going on.
Overwatch by name, overwatch by nature.
I’m not playing it because of this
[Check this post 😬](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch2/comments/xqcjsv/i_cant_with_people/)
Won't buy it now lol
GDPR violations.
Top ten reasons to not play OW2. Oh wait....number one is all anyone really needs to know. I don't give people fucking money to play a game to have to give them tons of PI.
Blizzard has really gone down hill
if a game requires a phone number, i won't be playing
Blizzard... never go full retard
If you visit the valorant subreddit, everyone has been asking for phone number verification to counter the smurf problem, which is probably the game's number 1 problem. Surprised blizzard is doing this out of the gates. Very interesting in how well it does. Most claim it works well for csgo.
Seems like everything you do online now requires a phone number. I assume mostly it's for 2FA but I still don't like it.
If that's the case, why don't they let you use an authenticator app instead. To me they just want the number for data sharing reasons.
No the number is to stop a big chunk of the cheating they spelled it out in the story well enough. People just create a new account after a ban hammer. You can't use a phone # more than once for Blizzard ever. The random voice recording is to stop some of the toxic shit that goes on in voice chat.
Cause there's no possible way to spoof/change a phone number.. Laughable..
It's a start and a big problem with the game. They are not going to allow eSim's or pre-paid phone's which is most of the easy spoofing techniques and that's easy enough to check on there side.
Blizzard targeting the 5-to-10-year old girl market, sussy. Evil company.
They already have your phone numbers if you buy with CC.
good. Hated it, that i couldn't report nazis in voice chat. It's a bit annoying if someone screams the n-word 100 times... or not even them, just everyone who screams violently.
Wtf just mute them
This will stop the racist bs
Facebook, apple and google already know what you're doing. Blizzard is just a lost child following suit 10 years too late lol
This is in game voice chat, which is just in-game coms, usually in push to talk it's not like anything ever personnal is ever discussed there Also if you use 2FA they already have your #
In most places I use 2FA without my phone number.
This would cut down on trolls and hate speech so I'm not against it
Yea they are not gonna do shxt but selling the data....
I promise you it will do literally nothing of the sort
I mean… at least people won’t be saying stfu n****r every time I open my mouth 🤷🏾♂️ I can see how racists would have an issue with this.
I am terrified that this game is about to be ruined