The Worst Trend in Gaming (that no one is properly discussing)

The Video Game Industry evolves at an incredible pace, but not all innovations are positive. Today we discuss an extremely harmful emerging trend which results in the opposite impact from what is advertised, barring hundreds of millions of people from accessing prominent titles without expensive third party contracts.

Activision Blizzard is once again on the cutting edge... of horrible things in the space.

#callofduty #overwatch2 #activision

[SergioLeonardoCornejo]

The problem with these companies is that they have enough blind consumers and sponsorship deals to force these bad habits upon users.

[mightylink]

Once again we're at the "Do you guys not have phones?" scenario, Blizzard never learns.

[KriptoSeriak]

You forgot about 2 prospects:
1) Introducing microtransactions that are payable through the Postpaid Phone Plan. This binds people to see what they spent only at the end of the month. Also, the consumers of the game are going to be bound by their contracts with the Phone Company to pay their dues to Blizzard.
2) When a kid uses a parent's Post Paid number to enter the game, Blizzard will know to whom to market future possible "presents" - the parent who has the money, not the kid. And also, making the kid pay through the Phone Company will be, at least for a time, like giving those children indirect access to their parent's bank accounts.
You see where I'm going with this?

[-Ryu]

Y'know, I miss when you literally put a coin into a machine to play video games. Back then it still made money, but also made it so you are risking only your pocket change, not your entire identity.

[Wolvenstryfe]

This feels suspiciously more like a "Social Credit Score" check, than any sort of "Anti Hack" feature.

[ulaznar]

I'm more concerned about the fact that doing something that the company considers offensive you'll lose access to all of the games that you've purchased in that account, and if they can get your personal data through the phone company, they could stop you from creating new accounts altogether.
Who knows what else will they do with the personal data of all of their playerbase. Maybe they will feed an algorithm capable of predicting 'unwanted' behavior

[ilovedogs]

This looks like another step towards turning smartphones into those universal IDs everyone was opposed to, clever tbh I can see this working

[ninjaswordtothehead]

Giving in to these corporate demands just to play a game, that is likely bugged/broken is pathetic. There are plenty of other video games and myriad forms of entertainment that don't hand over our lives to corporations.

[afrules]

Want to go back to the days, where you installed a game, and just had to double klick on a desktop icon to start it.

[WanderingMania]

Blizzard 2018: "Do you guys not have phones?"
Blizzard 2022: "Do you guys not have phone contracts?"
Me after fist hearing about it: "Oh just go bankrupt already."

[yowtfputthemaskbackon]

i think requiring smarpthone numbers for services that do not actually need your phone number should be illegal.
its the next stage of collecting your information and with some of these companies, and their size and especially strong political standpoint, that is genuinely a bit scary.

[Evanz]

What’s ridiculous to me is that this change doesn’t just stop new players from playing Overwatch 2 - but old players who BOUGHT the game are now barred from playing their old game because Blizzard have done this ridiculous move to wiping the old game and turning it into the sequel. So many anti-consumer practices all in one game.

[aFLYER]

So glad someone else is talking about this, seeing how much of an issue this will become

[loganthomas]

Not to mention the fact that if you get falsely banned like thousands of people did during the MW2 beta, that ban will now be tied to your personal phone number, potentially banning you from other games offered by the publisher, just because they dropped the ball with their Ricochet implementation....smh. it's an evil world we live in

[FPrimusUnicron]

The worst part of this is that it would require also many people to move to service providers they dont use for whatever reason, maybe even giving those an unfair advantage just because they are the only ones accepted by the POPULAR games, and then there are international providers that have their own restrictions,

[TransConservativewaifu]

you should also make a video about game companies obsession with ESG, and how it hurts creativity when it comes to games

[efficiencygaming]

The whole privacy aspect alone is deserving of backlash. I don't want to give my number to a corporation with the potential to do all sorts of shady things with it. I get enough scam calls as it is. What if they decide to lock me out of all their games based on just my phone number alone?

I hope this all backfires on Activision Blizzard, and I hope it backfires HARD.

[gengabe]

this is an actual gaming gate keeping event.

[requiem]

I think they're doing it so that your post paid account is then linked to your gaming account so you can make microtransactions and Bill to the post paid cell phone accounts opening up more people to the possibility of overspending on trivialities.

[SafetyFooT]

Prepaid phones are more transient and easier to get. When you're on a phone plan you are locked in and your phone is more clearly tied to a real person. Not allowing a prepaid phone is just further proof that it has nothing to do with cheating or any of that nonsense they say. It's so they can tie everything you do to a real identity that can be tracked and monitored at all times.