Microsoft apos;s £50bn Merger With Activision Blizzard Faces In-depth Probe

The day after Overwatch 2 launched, a community manager posted a status update blog saying, "We have made the decision to remove phone number requirements for a majority of existing Overwatch players. Any Overwatch player with a connected Battle.net account, which includes all players who have played since June 9, 2021, will not have to provide a phone number to play."

Green walks over to Poole and bumps him with his chest before Poole shoves Green. At that point, Green takes a swing with his right hand before both players go to the ground behind the basket while staff members move to break up the fracas.

The long-awaited sequel to Blizzard's hero shooter, Overwatch 2 introduces 5v5 PVP gameplay, a new battle pass system and, eventually, new story missions, though those won't be coming until next year. 

"We believe Tencent will continue to make reasonable investments to acquire quality gaming content and talents and deepen partnerships with top-tier studios worldwide in order to step up its investments and presence in overseas markets," said Citi analysts in a report in early September.

The CMA said merging Activision with Microsoft could allow the tech giant to use games to 'damage' competition in the growing market for cloud gaming, which allows consumers to stream games to their devices in a manner similar to Netflix's offering for movies and TV shows.

Green, 32, a four-time All-Star, is entering his 11th season in the league, all with the Warriors. He's a seven-time All-Defensive selection with career averages of 8.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists.

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Is Overwatch 2 free-to-play? Overwatch 2 is free to download and play. You can acquire the season one premium battle pass for 1,000 credits (a $10 purchase), and buy cosmetics in the shop with that same currency. If you've bought the Watchpoint Pack (available on PC,

You can enable SMS Protect by logging into your Battle.net account, going to Account Details >Phone Number and entering your phone number. Click Continue and you'll receive a verification code via text. Enter the code and your account will be verified. 

If you own the original Overwatch, the sequel is available to you as an update (admittedly a very large update -- about 50GB on PC and 30GB on console), which means you don't need to download a separate game. Just go to the game, check for updates, and the Overwatch 2 update should begin to download immediately.

'But currently feedback from our creators, users, playtesters, and many of us on the team is that the aggregate weight of papercuts, stability issues, and bugs is making it too hard for our community to experience the magic of Horizon. 

Apart from the core gaming sector, Tencent is also looking to snap up global assets, in particular in Europe, related to the so-called metaverse, said one of the sources and another source with direct knowledge of the matter.

However, any Overwatch accounts that are not linked to a Blizzard account will still need to link their account to a phone number, as will new players. The blog post says this measure help protect the community against cheating.

In Europe, except for its purchase of majority stake in "Clash of Clans" mobile game maker Supercell for $8.6 billion in 2016, Tencent has for years mostly cut minority deals including its purchase of 9% of British gaming firm Frontier Developments.

First announced at BlizzCon 2019, Overwatch 2 represents a big shift for the series. The sequel fully commits to a live-service, free-to-play model where the game continually receives new content, in the form of seasonal content with new heroes, new maps and major religiopedia.com writes balance patches each season. This model is an attempt by Blizzard to fulfill the original promise of Overwatch.