So a couple of days ago, Overwatch 2 launched, and, among many other problems, the game caused controversy because Activision-Blizzard demanded their users a phone number to access the game. After the quite obvious and justified backlash, Activision-Blizzard said they would work on fixing it in some way. But then, the next CoD is announced to need your phone.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-will-require-phone-number-verification/1100-6508136/

Why are they doing this? This is a flagrant violation of the users' privacy, not to mention creepy as fuck. And I don't believe for a second the argument that it's to "combat the trolls". Do you think this is going to spread to other companies besides Activision?

The "Don't you guys have phones?" rabbit hole gets deeper...

It makes sense why such as combating cheaters, but it do be annoying. This is a perfect example how dumb ppl can ruin other's fun...

So they can sell the info. Companies will pay so they can better target ads.

And pre-paid phones don't work.

Smurf accounts and cheaters were a rampant problem in the original game. I honestly don't mind it (assuming it actually reduces/deters people from creating infinite spam accounts to cheat and/or ruin matches for lower-ranked players.

It's more understandable in F2P games like these where it costs bad actors nothing to make endless dummy accounts and you gotta do something to fight against it, but it could certainly be handled better for legitimate users (not like SMS verification is exactly foolproof itself). I do feel bad for anyone currently having trouble due to pre-paid/no phones and hope they see a solution soon.

Did you try that?

What's the issue here? Confused because I don't see any

Honestly I hope this damages MWII's sales. It will 100% be a broken and buggy crashfest like all recent CoDs.

Privacy. Imagine they have a data breach.