This article was written by Staff Writer Angel Quintana.

Activision Blizzard the kings of video game industry controversy, they’re always messing something up in the worst way possible, but what makes what they’ve done now different before? They’ve started what is most likely the most predatory and classist tactic when it comes to the video game industry to date, they’re asking for your phone number. 

Now, “What’s the big deal? It’s just my number,” you may be asking. Blizzard as a company has always been scummy but never have they done something to stop you from playing a game because of your financial status, but with this new system they’ve put into Overwatch, which they’ve recently made “free to play,” making it so it’d be even more marketable and reach even more people than it did before. This now requires you put in your phone number from a non-prepaid plan in order to have the ability to report you for your use of game chat if needed. Now please tell me you see the problem with that sentence? You don’t? There’s no shame in it, but here’s a couple of reasons why you should get educated.

The problem at hand with this new system is that it requires you to have a non prepaid phone number to play. Now in case you didn’t know, a lot of people aren’t always fortunate enough financially to afford a phone so a lot of people have to resort to a prepaid plan. “Alright I get that, but why does Blizzard not allow the use of a prepaid phone number?” Well it’s very simple: it’s about the dimes they can squeeze from your data and sell to advertisers. 

Now you probably don’t probably don’t believe this one because as previously mentioned the official reason they gave us earlier was to make the game chat feature less toxic by increasing accountability. Well, guess what? Companies lie. Companies lie literally all the time, especially Blizzard. Blizzard never cared about making game chat a less toxic environment, they just want your money. It wouldn’t have been an issue if it weren’t for the fact that it literally limits those with less money in their pockets from playing the “free” game. It’s been genuinely devastating seeing and hearing from the people that were excited to play Overwatch, disappointed that they can’t play it because of their phone plan (like for instance my significant other). They were really excited to play just to find out they couldn’t because of their prepaid phone number. Just the other day on the app TikTok, a parent was talking about how sad their child is because they can’t play the game. The fact that people genuinely feel bad because they don’t have enough money to play a free game shouldn’t have been a thing in the first place.

This isn’t the real reason to be talking about this, this is a call to arms in a strange sort of way. You see we don’t want this business model replicated anywhere else but unfortunately that has already happened. The latest COD, Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is a $70 triple A game, very much a household name guaranteed to sell millions of copies, has adopted the very same scummy business practice that Overwatch has. There’s no reason anyone should do this but especially these multi-million dollar companies. 

Do not let this business practice grow into other games. No one can stop you or anyone for that matter from buying from these games or even playing them but do anything you can to make your voice heard. From boycotting to protesting to even writing about your own experience dealing with this shady business tactic and telling people to share the message. Anything helps. Just don’t do nothing.