Wrath what? Blizzard doesn’t have time to think about the immediate past when it has another launch coming right around the corner. Next week, on October 4th, Overwatch 2 is coming to you loud, proud, and free-to-play.
Of course, the title won’t be arriving tabula rasa; Blizzard’s team shooter franchise sports a shaky history of toxic player behavior and other concerning issues. This is something the studio hopes to quell, at least to a degree, with Overwatch 2 and a new initiative that it’s calling “Defense Matrix.”
This initiative is made up of several different elements. Overwatch 2 will require players to tie their account to a phone for security, use machine learning to identify disruptive behavior, restrict features to new players, and remove general chat in game menus.
“Overwatch 2 gives us the chance to continue to level-up and iterate on our systems to combat disruptive behavior and cheating in ways that a simple update wouldn’t allow,” Blizzard said.
