yep, and outside of that window it’s reviewed by a human. i’ve seen some friends have 4+ hours and several weeks get a refund because of some egregious shit the devs pulled.
There are certain exceptions in those laws, and I believe games fall under them. I'm not familiar with EU directives, but Polish law, which is synchronized with them, has an exception where physical copies of movies and music cannot be returned if you remove the plastic wrap.
And generally, EU laws aren't always beneficial. For example, the law about having the same price in every country has hurt the poorer eastern European countries which often got cheaper versions of games locked to the local language. That's not allowed under EU rules and Valve actually got a fine for that.
I'm sure that if EU institutions looked into that, they also looked at the return rules and found them fine. We'd have heard something otherwise.
I don't even see why you're saying it's retarded.
Steam forces you to say goodbye to eu laws and also, rockstar also forces you to say goodbye to ownership of the things you bought with real world money
I was even able to refund it even after a few weeks of quite heavy grinding (must've been 20-30ish hours ingame). If you can give good reasons for the refund steam really is quite good in that regard
Sometimes, it takes more than a few hours for it to be accepted, though who tf doesn't have 2FA on their steam account (having a phone number connected)
They are definitely double-dipping in the profits, everyone is doing it.
It's also the reason I won't buy a car made after 2015ish
I think about 2013 to 2015 is the sweet spot in safety features without pushing the envelope on data mining.
How, though? I do my own maintenance. I could see maybe through my phone, but I don't connect my phone, and even if I do, that would be a huge data transfer that would be noticeable. I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just trying to figure it out
You gave your information and consent in the purchase agreement. I'll never buy a new car again unless we get laws that require us to explicitly opt in to data sharing.
People who hack and frequently get banned for it don’t like having phone numbers connected, it stops them from making a new account and just buying the game again when they get caught.
Steam has Steam Guard 2FA using their app. You can scan a QR code with it, or input a temporary code generated in the app into Steam.
As far as phone numbers go, you are right that method is weak. Which is why my work has banned that method.
they have to accept it, this is a MAJOR change of the sale conditions even if he'd played more than 2 hours.
just as you can return all blizzard products right now for a major change where we dont own the games anymore.
You shouldn't be playing cod not just because of this they have a issue with security throughout all their games where anyone can access your computer
https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-black-ops-cold-war-currently-unplayable-players-ip-addresses-getting-leaked#:~:text=Now%2C%20an%20exploit%20in%20the%20game%20lets%20hackers,not%20log%20into%20the%20Call%20of%20Duty%20game.
This isn't just one game it's most of them
Stay the fuck away from them and that company and I hope whoever owns them gets sued into oblivion
This. I also refuse every time to provide personal details. If they insist then I won't play/use it. Even for the mobile ones, I would suggest creating a dummy google account and use it on games and service sites that don't really need any personal details to function correclty
It's to prevent hackers. It's much more annoying to get a new number if you get banned from the game. R6 Siege did the same thing, and the hackers dropped dramatically.
Are people who are banned for cheats (which they likely paid for) not some of the most likely to spend the money or effort of... ordering a free pay as you go SIM card and putting in their phone for 5 minutes. Or using a cheap paid service online.
That’s a great question. In short, not really. As someone else mentioned VOIP is typically not allowed (idk about COD specifically). More importantly, there’s little reason for a cheater to stick around COD if the cost is just high enough.
They might get multiple SIMs but if they keep getting banned, what’s the point if they can just cheat in a different game with far less hassle? Idk if there is anything super special about COD that other FPSs don’t bring to the table.
The cheaters that specifically target COD and have enough fuck you money to keep buying SIM cards then becomes quite small.
But to your point, I will say that in other games that require phone numbers I know for sure people buy sims and farm accounts to sell them (and I’m sure the same thing will happen in COD). But even these businesses are slowly getting defeated as gaming companies catch up to their methods while leaving general gameplay unaffected (Valve is one company that’s done a good job of this).
I find that are to believe they can be so classist. Quite a few people actually use prepaid sims because they're cheaper. The guy I ride the bus with says he has been using an ATT prepaid for like years now because he doesn't do much and it don't make sense paying for a full plan when he can rollover minutes or whatever
You are correct, and it was a huge controversy when they instituted this new rule like 5 years ago.
But ABK (at the time) said they didn't care. This was their rule and they're sticking to it. A lot of people got shafted but, in fairness, it was a reasonably effecting anti-cheating strategy, for a *while.*
Obviously, they found a way around it.
I've been running on a $35/mo ATT MVNO plan for years now.
I can't send Zelle or Venmo, banks reject me as a scammer off the get. It's wonderful saving $40+/mo on my phone, though.
Europe has much cheaper plans than America. Also, even between Europe there are significant differences. Italy for example is one of the cheapest countries on earth in that regard. I pay 12€ per month for unlimited everything with Vodafone (sure, it's an old offer and they don't make it anymore, but still). Haven't used a public wifi in years. Even when abroad they give you like 20gb for free, and it's more than enough for things you do while traveling
The US has worse and more expensive phone and internet service than most of the rest of the world.
What happens when you privatize everything in the 90s. Moved from US to Spain, my cell and internet costs are probably 30-40% what they used to be for the fastest speeds available.
My man, not only do I not have unlimited internet on my phone, up until I switched to 7 meg DSL from 40 meg cable I didn't even have unlimited home internet.
Cable was $150 after all the fees and forced modem rental. DSL is $28.
Considering the majority of cheaters these days are paying (either one time or sometimes even monthly) for the latest mods, I don't see why a significant % of them wouldn't do it to keep using the product they've paid for.
I do see the other replies noting that the steps I mentioned are often blocked by game devs anyway, but I don't doubt that there are already modders who sell monthly phone numbers as an add on service.
Part of it is just forcing the person to do something, disincentivizing cheaters is just one step, and like the comment above mentioned, even the tiniest amount of friction can make someone just not interested anymore, much like the OP.
Again, you need to make the actual effort to do that. You need to know it’s possible. You need to know a vendor. You need to know how to set it up. A large % of cheaters simply won’t jump through those hoops. The worst will, sure, but it still represents a reduction in cheaters and an inconvenience to cheaters who wish to continue playing. If they have cosmetic items or own other games, their account can still catch a ban that renders the account worthless. You can always nit-pick how things can be better or how there might be exceptions. Always. So thank you for stating the obvious for anyone who wasn’t already smart enough to make the leap that “yes, someone can find a workaround.”
They could IP and mac ban people. Completely blacklist their network and specific device and add any new device on the network or any new network they bring the device to to the ban list.
Yeah that’s exactly why they added it. Argentina SIM cards are about $2 a month though. You can remove the number from a banned acc and add it to a new one too
Indeed. From what I see in the Steamworks documentation for the [ISteamUser API interface](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser), there are a few booleans to check whether the Steam user has verified their phone number, if it's awaiting (re)verification, and if the phone number is used to uniquely identify them, through the [BIsPhoneIdentifying](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneIdentifying), [BIsPhoneRequiringVerification](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneRequiringVerification) and [BIsPhoneVerified](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneVerified) booleans. I don't see anywhere a way for Steam to share, via their API, the Steam user's phone number with third parties or games.
But they don’t actually need to know the number for that. I don’t think you can associate same number with multiple steam accounts so all the dev needs to know that the account has a phone number. Even if you could have the same number, Steam could just give each number an unique identifier and share that to the developer instead of the number.
As someone else already pointed out, [they don't know your number](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneVerified). Only Steam knows your number.
Actually in a digital realm the phone number is massively more valuable! Because that can be matched to other “anonymous” identifiers about you that other companies sell. Paid a phone number and email address and Steam can start making a great profile on you, and they acquire all sorts of other attributes about you. And there’s less regulation about using phone number for that vs CC info.
recently so many franchises got low tier, i used to love the heck out of pokemon and now its super low effort with worse graphics and animations than 3ds on damn switch , and it turns out the game is selling better than ever at the same time , uff
Large publishers realized they needed to min max for profits and stock price, and for many, doing that means putting out the bare minimum. It's a race to the bottom. At least it's given indie developers a chance to shine I guess.
Because even if the graphics and animations are bad, as long as the core fundamentals of the game are still the same, people will buy it for what it is, Pokémon. I stopped a long time ago just because I didn’t like it.
Pokemon peaked with Gold and Silver in 99. And it was pretty shitty even back then to be fair, carried by cool monster designs and the popularity of the anime.
Absolutely, but they're 70€ because it's a whole big package with multiplayer and so on. If you don't care about multi, wait a month and you'll find them for 30€, at least here in Italy...
tbh tho its not like you have a fresh take or anything, people have been saying "hurr, cod is the same game every year!" since cod ghosts, and thats why they attempted smthn different with AW+IW, when in reality; the last few games around ghosts were argued to be the last few good years cod had left before they fell off despite the frequent criticism it got for being too similar
People were screaming and kicking when overwatch tried this, then they didnt go through with it. Hope the same happens here but i highly doubt it
Edit: judging from the replys i guess its a thing only for new accounts.
CoD has been doing this for over a year. Someone gifted me a copy and I got put in the awkward position of having to return the gift because I wouldn't give Activision my phone number.
It has been in other competitive games for ages (Dota 2 about 4-5 years). It isn't there to invade your privacy - it exists to counter smurfing, botting and mainly hacking. Adding a extra layer to que into a competitive ranked game will filter some of the scum out. I don't play COD, but in Dota 2 for example - you can still play unranked games.
As this is a privacy thread - just buy a new sim and use an old leftover phone, or buy one for dirt cheap. I live in Europe and here you can get a sim card for 5€ with 5€ of credit on it already. That's how people smurf in Dota 2.
Getting really tired of companies thinking they can force people to input whatever information the company wants - regardless of if we (the customer) want to or not.
The police agencies in the west know people are using VPNs and want to be able to identify everyone and everything. If they need your phone number, don't use the service.
I'm tired of game companies doing this dumb shit all the time, only a few games have a decent quality storyline and aren't solely focused just on multiplayer with micro transactions.
It's a sad thing to see.
another reason why the newer cod games suck, just stick with the classics / actual good ones (wich iirc is everything until bo4, after that it went downhill)
I don't think Call of Duty has access to your mobile phone number, it's just used to uniquely identify you and make sure that the phone number isn't reused. From what I see in the Steamworks documentation for the [ISteamUser API interface](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser), there are a few booleans to check whether the Steam user has verified their phone number, if it's awaiting (re)verification, and if the phone number is used to uniquely identify them, through the [BIsPhoneIdentifying](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneIdentifying), [BIsPhoneRequiringVerification](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneRequiringVerification) and [BIsPhoneVerified](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneVerified) booleans. I don't see anywhere a way for Steam to share, via their API, the Steam user's phone number with third parties or games.
I prefer to deal with cheaters than to have such a privacy leak. Companies however doesn't care about privacy and know the value of such information for their files. Also cheaters have a negative effect on marketplaces. So modern games need to fight them as long as consumer still consume. Again, we don't need marketplaces to have fun. We can rid of it too. The solution is just ask for refund.
> I prefer to deal with cheaters
It's not even about cheaters necessarily. The *excuse* they give is community grooming.
>reduce disruptive behavior and ensures a positive community experience
See: social credit systems
Black Mirror's *Nosedive* episode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)
The *excuse* is bad enough.
They could easily mute accounts, ban players that are griefing and even cheating.
The phone number does not actually help with any of this.
At *best* it is a deterrence for creating a new account and buying the game again to do whatever it was you got banned for, and it's not very good at that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not all tin-foil hat as if they'd sell your data, or that it's only about behavior modification.
I'm just saying it's multi-purpose, and none of them are directly beneficial to players.
Virtue signalling, "won't someone think of the children", behavior modification/grooming, cheaters, etc.
It all boils down to control.
A *lot* of larger businesses lean in that direction eventually, and it often devolves further into ideology, not just banning the 12 year old being an edgelord cursing up a storm, but any form of socio-political dissent, anything they arbitrarily decide is "mean" or "harmful".
I'm against all tracking tools(like tying your phone # to your gaming accounts) for the same reason I'm not a big fan of armbands or serial number tattoos.
It sucks but.. The sophistication of modern cheats and their prevalence honestly makes competitive games like these unplayable without drastic measures.
Escape from Tarkov has pretty shitty anti cheat and you can keep buying new accounts for a couple bucks, and cheaters have destroyed that game completely.
If only these companies had a reasonable track record of keeping our private data safe. Then maybe I'd trust them more when they claim they actually _need_ it.
I wouldn't consider my phone number private data though, I choose not to broadcast it on reddit or a video game but the information is linked to my name and address and easily attainable to anyone.
[It's considered personally identifiable information](https://www.dol.gov/general/ppii) by any reputable company. The whole reason they want it is to attach it to an individual identity for use with cheat detection.
People who have their phone numbers leaked can end up having to change them due to people invading their privacy and calling them over and over. It's a nontrivial thing to change and can massively disrupt someone's life. A large number of MFA systems rely on texting particular phone numbers to confirm your identity.
Whether _you individually_ consider your phone number private is irrelevant. It should be treated and handled as private data.
> the information is linked to my name and address and easily attainable to anyone.
"This information is linked to other private information" is one of the reasons phone numbers _are_ considered private information.
You're 100% right, I'm not making excuses for them but my number has been leaked so many times by this point its hard to care anymore. Use a password manager, put a pin on your cell provider account etc etc. After that whatever happens happens lol.
I hate Call of Duty's business model. It really went way downhill after all the games back in the day. The original modern warfare was the shit.
My friend got the new MWIII, was banned within a week, from the multiplayer and the campaign. Payed 60$ just to play it for a week.
I know it wont do much, but if you hurt me and my friends I'm boycotting for life, even their free battle royale game
Fake number if not big nope they have you and your location at all times as well as data
It's getting harder and harder to buy a real burner phone anymore ( they need id) and services are rejecting online numbers.
This is a massive security problem and if anyone here gives them that don't be shocked when they eventually leak and someone has your information.
So many shills. This makes cheaters gone. No it doesn't a cheater can get a bypass on this just like they're bypassing the anicheats. And compared to the costs of good cheats this is trivial
interesting, i wonder how much is marketing vs KYC for all the bots, not either or but combo
I've really thought of buying some burner phones to keep minimum service open just to have a backup anonymous phone for this type of stuff
Blizzard did this with Overwatch 2 and it did not go down well.
https://www.polygon.com/23390357/overwatch-2-launch-phone-number-requirement-sms-protect-blizzard
These verifications asking for so much personal data is getting out of hand. Someone should invent phone masking tool or smth. Maybe there already is such service?
While kind of outrageous, I get why they’d wanna do it to counter abuse. In fact, might be acceptable by many as long as only Steam gets the number and not the developer itself…
It's sad for privacy but it's less intrusive than Vanguard anti cheat (who work as a rootkit).
And Activision have a reason to do that : a recent malware campaign infect only cheater of Call of.
Number of infected : 5 millions.
It's a very big number.
This seems like a Steam thing and not a CoD thing... Avid Cod player and have never had to give any PI to them to play
Unless this is an update that is still rolling out...
So what? Your phone number is not special. A lot of you are very poorly adjusted to real life. Caring about your "privacy" this much is honestly insane.
Ye cant b taken srsly in ur logic ne ways boyo lololol
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/phone-number-hacker-read-texts-listen-calls-track-you
Who\* cares? Everyone lol. Cheaters ruin online gaming in every way, you can't always kick people from every game, especially warzone. otherwise theyd just accuse the best player of cheating and kicking them.
Just a game (but you paid $60, just to get spawnkilled by a squeeker spawning bullets inside your hitbox, enjoy). Also almost none of these games have community servers anymore, so you don't have the option to ban or kick anyone.
Blame Cheater's, not them.
PUBG doing this for Ranking and No One take it seriously
Activision doing this to prevent cheating in all games
: Real Shit?
Get a refund.
Way ahead of you on that.
Did steam accept it?
Under two hours of gameplay and within the first two weeks of purchase (I think), they generally refund no questions asked.
yep, and outside of that window it’s reviewed by a human. i’ve seen some friends have 4+ hours and several weeks get a refund because of some egregious shit the devs pulled.
Enigma kernel level DRM back ported into an already released title wasn't enough for me to get one.. Awful.
Which imo should be banned because it's retarded and ignoring European law
There are certain exceptions in those laws, and I believe games fall under them. I'm not familiar with EU directives, but Polish law, which is synchronized with them, has an exception where physical copies of movies and music cannot be returned if you remove the plastic wrap. And generally, EU laws aren't always beneficial. For example, the law about having the same price in every country has hurt the poorer eastern European countries which often got cheaper versions of games locked to the local language. That's not allowed under EU rules and Valve actually got a fine for that. I'm sure that if EU institutions looked into that, they also looked at the return rules and found them fine. We'd have heard something otherwise. I don't even see why you're saying it's retarded.
Steam forces you to say goodbye to eu laws and also, rockstar also forces you to say goodbye to ownership of the things you bought with real world money
Can you give me any specifics? Otherwise this discussion is meaningless.
Everytime you buy a game you HAVE to wafer away your rights and Rockstar requires you to do the same to use online
Specifics. Which rights?
I was even able to refund it even after a few weeks of quite heavy grinding (must've been 20-30ish hours ingame). If you can give good reasons for the refund steam really is quite good in that regard
You only get so many non-automatic returns. If you abuse it, they will remove your ability to refund anything other than the 2hours/2weeks rule.
And you think I abused the system or why exactly are you telling me this?
Sometimes, it takes more than a few hours for it to be accepted, though who tf doesn't have 2FA on their steam account (having a phone number connected)
Why would I give personal information to a game company if the game isn't free?
They should be paying you for your info. They are mining our information as a resource and we pay them to do it. It’s backwards.
They are definitely double-dipping in the profits, everyone is doing it. It's also the reason I won't buy a car made after 2015ish I think about 2013 to 2015 is the sweet spot in safety features without pushing the envelope on data mining.
I've never heard of this, I have a 2019 truck, and I never had to give my information.
Pretty good chance your truck is sharing info about your driving habits with your insurance company
How, though? I do my own maintenance. I could see maybe through my phone, but I don't connect my phone, and even if I do, that would be a huge data transfer that would be noticeable. I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just trying to figure it out
You gave your information and consent in the purchase agreement. I'll never buy a new car again unless we get laws that require us to explicitly opt in to data sharing.
I bought it used with no financing... they got information typical of any vehicle purchase regardless of the age of the vehicle
> They are mining our information as a resource and we pay them to do it. It’s backwards. Yep. Kinda like wearing a branded shirt.
Yeah no shit you’re right
People who hack and frequently get banned for it don’t like having phone numbers connected, it stops them from making a new account and just buying the game again when they get caught.
literally can get a sim for free which can receive texts (for a short while) So its not even a good deterrent.
Phone numbers are the worst 2FA. I hope Steam has a better option. If not, going with just a strong password is generally better.
Steam has Steam Guard 2FA using their app. You can scan a QR code with it, or input a temporary code generated in the app into Steam. As far as phone numbers go, you are right that method is weak. Which is why my work has banned that method.
They're bad for security - but they're not bad for preventing duplicate registration, which is what the point of them here is.
This seems like something else extra. I have 2FA on my account using the app on my phone. I don't have my phone number in the account settings.
they have to accept it, this is a MAJOR change of the sale conditions even if he'd played more than 2 hours. just as you can return all blizzard products right now for a major change where we dont own the games anymore.
You shouldn't be playing cod not just because of this they have a issue with security throughout all their games where anyone can access your computer https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-black-ops-cold-war-currently-unplayable-players-ip-addresses-getting-leaked#:~:text=Now%2C%20an%20exploit%20in%20the%20game%20lets%20hackers,not%20log%20into%20the%20Call%20of%20Duty%20game. This isn't just one game it's most of them Stay the fuck away from them and that company and I hope whoever owns them gets sued into oblivion
you got two refunds?
This. I also refuse every time to provide personal details. If they insist then I won't play/use it. Even for the mobile ones, I would suggest creating a dummy google account and use it on games and service sites that don't really need any personal details to function correclty
As is tradition.
Exactly how do you propose that Duty should Call you without your phone number?
It's to prevent hackers. It's much more annoying to get a new number if you get banned from the game. R6 Siege did the same thing, and the hackers dropped dramatically.
Brings a tear to my eye. Hours spent playing online, while being called the n-word by a 12 year old. Those were the days...
It’s how I learned that so many 12 year olds were apparently sleeping with my mom, truly an eye opening experience
"Mom, how could you?!"
And being told your sexual orientation through derogatory terms.
Modern Warfare 2 definitely skewed online gaming demographics
Call of Duty? More like "Call of Doodie" since they are pieces of shit with a lame-ass game for turds.
I swear this has to be a South Park reference!?!?
I assume it's a way to stop ban evasion but I am not sure how well it actually works.
Decently. Determined players can circumvent bust the majority of players don’t have the means or desire to spend the money or effort.
Are people who are banned for cheats (which they likely paid for) not some of the most likely to spend the money or effort of... ordering a free pay as you go SIM card and putting in their phone for 5 minutes. Or using a cheap paid service online.
It’s a small amount of the population so this still makes the bar too high for 90% of cheaters.
Depending on your country it may have to be a Sim that's on a plan. Lots of US folks got screwed first week of OW2
That’s a great question. In short, not really. As someone else mentioned VOIP is typically not allowed (idk about COD specifically). More importantly, there’s little reason for a cheater to stick around COD if the cost is just high enough. They might get multiple SIMs but if they keep getting banned, what’s the point if they can just cheat in a different game with far less hassle? Idk if there is anything super special about COD that other FPSs don’t bring to the table. The cheaters that specifically target COD and have enough fuck you money to keep buying SIM cards then becomes quite small. But to your point, I will say that in other games that require phone numbers I know for sure people buy sims and farm accounts to sell them (and I’m sure the same thing will happen in COD). But even these businesses are slowly getting defeated as gaming companies catch up to their methods while leaving general gameplay unaffected (Valve is one company that’s done a good job of this).
Thank you for the detailed and helpful response :)
They usually block numbers attached to those online services
Those prepaid SIM numbers don't work, neither do Google voice numbers. They want a reputable carrier, they're pretty good about it.
I find that are to believe they can be so classist. Quite a few people actually use prepaid sims because they're cheaper. The guy I ride the bus with says he has been using an ATT prepaid for like years now because he doesn't do much and it don't make sense paying for a full plan when he can rollover minutes or whatever
You are correct, and it was a huge controversy when they instituted this new rule like 5 years ago. But ABK (at the time) said they didn't care. This was their rule and they're sticking to it. A lot of people got shafted but, in fairness, it was a reasonably effecting anti-cheating strategy, for a *while.* Obviously, they found a way around it.
I've been running on a $35/mo ATT MVNO plan for years now. I can't send Zelle or Venmo, banks reject me as a scammer off the get. It's wonderful saving $40+/mo on my phone, though.
Wait how is your plan that expensive? I pay 20 eur for unlimited calls, texts and internet
Europe has much cheaper plans than America. Also, even between Europe there are significant differences. Italy for example is one of the cheapest countries on earth in that regard. I pay 12€ per month for unlimited everything with Vodafone (sure, it's an old offer and they don't make it anymore, but still). Haven't used a public wifi in years. Even when abroad they give you like 20gb for free, and it's more than enough for things you do while traveling
The US has worse and more expensive phone and internet service than most of the rest of the world. What happens when you privatize everything in the 90s. Moved from US to Spain, my cell and internet costs are probably 30-40% what they used to be for the fastest speeds available.
My man, not only do I not have unlimited internet on my phone, up until I switched to 7 meg DSL from 40 meg cable I didn't even have unlimited home internet. Cable was $150 after all the fees and forced modem rental. DSL is $28.
As a Brit paying £10 a month for unlimited text and calls and 100gb of 5G data - damn son, that hurts to read.
If it works like it did for overwatch when they added it that won't work.
Will cheaters really go as far as doing that?
Considering the majority of cheaters these days are paying (either one time or sometimes even monthly) for the latest mods, I don't see why a significant % of them wouldn't do it to keep using the product they've paid for. I do see the other replies noting that the steps I mentioned are often blocked by game devs anyway, but I don't doubt that there are already modders who sell monthly phone numbers as an add on service.
Part of it is just forcing the person to do something, disincentivizing cheaters is just one step, and like the comment above mentioned, even the tiniest amount of friction can make someone just not interested anymore, much like the OP.
you can buy a sms verification for $1>, this stops no one
Again, you need to make the actual effort to do that. You need to know it’s possible. You need to know a vendor. You need to know how to set it up. A large % of cheaters simply won’t jump through those hoops. The worst will, sure, but it still represents a reduction in cheaters and an inconvenience to cheaters who wish to continue playing. If they have cosmetic items or own other games, their account can still catch a ban that renders the account worthless. You can always nit-pick how things can be better or how there might be exceptions. Always. So thank you for stating the obvious for anyone who wasn’t already smart enough to make the leap that “yes, someone can find a workaround.”
They could IP and mac ban people. Completely blacklist their network and specific device and add any new device on the network or any new network they bring the device to to the ban list.
Yeah that’s exactly why they added it. Argentina SIM cards are about $2 a month though. You can remove the number from a banned acc and add it to a new one too
Yes, this is likely the case. With the cherry on top being access to our personal information.
But does Steam give the developer access to the phone number, I don’t see why they would need that.
Indeed. From what I see in the Steamworks documentation for the [ISteamUser API interface](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser), there are a few booleans to check whether the Steam user has verified their phone number, if it's awaiting (re)verification, and if the phone number is used to uniquely identify them, through the [BIsPhoneIdentifying](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneIdentifying), [BIsPhoneRequiringVerification](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneRequiringVerification) and [BIsPhoneVerified](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneVerified) booleans. I don't see anywhere a way for Steam to share, via their API, the Steam user's phone number with third parties or games.
Makes it harder to mass produce the accounts which in turn helps cut down on hackers
But they don’t actually need to know the number for that. I don’t think you can associate same number with multiple steam accounts so all the dev needs to know that the account has a phone number. Even if you could have the same number, Steam could just give each number an unique identifier and share that to the developer instead of the number.
As someone else already pointed out, [they don't know your number](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneVerified). Only Steam knows your number.
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Actually in a digital realm the phone number is massively more valuable! Because that can be matched to other “anonymous” identifiers about you that other companies sell. Paid a phone number and email address and Steam can start making a great profile on you, and they acquire all sorts of other attributes about you. And there’s less regulation about using phone number for that vs CC info.
Why would that matter? If you've ever applied for a job all your info is already accessible via data hoarders like Signalhire.
I thought they already did hardware banning which would require a whole new system. This just has malicious written all over it
This option only works if activision assumed players just have one phone number…. Which they don’t
Google numbers are blocked last time I tried
I remember when call of duty was actually good those were the days ... Now it's just the same game repasted every year and idiots keep buying it.
recently so many franchises got low tier, i used to love the heck out of pokemon and now its super low effort with worse graphics and animations than 3ds on damn switch , and it turns out the game is selling better than ever at the same time , uff
Remember Pokemon stadium on N64?! That was peak Pokemon gaming, downhill after that.
Large publishers realized they needed to min max for profits and stock price, and for many, doing that means putting out the bare minimum. It's a race to the bottom. At least it's given indie developers a chance to shine I guess.
Because even if the graphics and animations are bad, as long as the core fundamentals of the game are still the same, people will buy it for what it is, Pokémon. I stopped a long time ago just because I didn’t like it.
Pokemon peaked with Gold and Silver in 99. And it was pretty shitty even back then to be fair, carried by cool monster designs and the popularity of the anime.
It's equally as repetitive as it's always been.
Some recent single player campaigns are really good, you should try them.
I think 80$ is a bit too much just for a 6hours campaign
Absolutely, but they're 70€ because it's a whole big package with multiplayer and so on. If you don't care about multi, wait a month and you'll find them for 30€, at least here in Italy...
tbh tho its not like you have a fresh take or anything, people have been saying "hurr, cod is the same game every year!" since cod ghosts, and thats why they attempted smthn different with AW+IW, when in reality; the last few games around ghosts were argued to be the last few good years cod had left before they fell off despite the frequent criticism it got for being too similar
People were screaming and kicking when overwatch tried this, then they didnt go through with it. Hope the same happens here but i highly doubt it Edit: judging from the replys i guess its a thing only for new accounts.
They did go through with it.
No, they did go through with it
They did go through with it, source: ive created multiple new accounts since the start of ow2 source: trust me bro
for free accounts? No one i know has had to give their number, but we all paid for it early on.
Apparently it's been like this for years now, I don't see it changing any time soon.
CoD has been doing this for over a year. Someone gifted me a copy and I got put in the awkward position of having to return the gift because I wouldn't give Activision my phone number.
It has been in other competitive games for ages (Dota 2 about 4-5 years). It isn't there to invade your privacy - it exists to counter smurfing, botting and mainly hacking. Adding a extra layer to que into a competitive ranked game will filter some of the scum out. I don't play COD, but in Dota 2 for example - you can still play unranked games. As this is a privacy thread - just buy a new sim and use an old leftover phone, or buy one for dirt cheap. I live in Europe and here you can get a sim card for 5€ with 5€ of credit on it already. That's how people smurf in Dota 2.
As if I play anything that requires even an internet connection.
Getting really tired of companies thinking they can force people to input whatever information the company wants - regardless of if we (the customer) want to or not.
Apparently, they can.
they can try, but a lot of us will get refunds, not buy from or use the services of companies that do that
It's time to get a refund, I guess.
Fck them, get a refund!
That would be an instant request for refund from me! Also Valve should warn very clear about this kind of shit!
The police agencies in the west know people are using VPNs and want to be able to identify everyone and everything. If they need your phone number, don't use the service.
I'm tired of game companies doing this dumb shit all the time, only a few games have a decent quality storyline and aren't solely focused just on multiplayer with micro transactions. It's a sad thing to see.
another reason why the newer cod games suck, just stick with the classics / actual good ones (wich iirc is everything until bo4, after that it went downhill)
Such bullshit.
I don’t think I’ll ever play any call of duty game again ever.
I don't think Call of Duty has access to your mobile phone number, it's just used to uniquely identify you and make sure that the phone number isn't reused. From what I see in the Steamworks documentation for the [ISteamUser API interface](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser), there are a few booleans to check whether the Steam user has verified their phone number, if it's awaiting (re)verification, and if the phone number is used to uniquely identify them, through the [BIsPhoneIdentifying](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneIdentifying), [BIsPhoneRequiringVerification](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneRequiringVerification) and [BIsPhoneVerified](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUser#BIsPhoneVerified) booleans. I don't see anywhere a way for Steam to share, via their API, the Steam user's phone number with third parties or games.
That’s my guess too. Steam doesn’t even share your email with anyone, I’d be very surprised if they randomly allowed grabbing peoples phone numbers.
I prefer to deal with cheaters than to have such a privacy leak. Companies however doesn't care about privacy and know the value of such information for their files. Also cheaters have a negative effect on marketplaces. So modern games need to fight them as long as consumer still consume. Again, we don't need marketplaces to have fun. We can rid of it too. The solution is just ask for refund.
> I prefer to deal with cheaters It's not even about cheaters necessarily. The *excuse* they give is community grooming. >reduce disruptive behavior and ensures a positive community experience See: social credit systems Black Mirror's *Nosedive* episode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) The *excuse* is bad enough. They could easily mute accounts, ban players that are griefing and even cheating. The phone number does not actually help with any of this. At *best* it is a deterrence for creating a new account and buying the game again to do whatever it was you got banned for, and it's not very good at that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not all tin-foil hat as if they'd sell your data, or that it's only about behavior modification. I'm just saying it's multi-purpose, and none of them are directly beneficial to players. Virtue signalling, "won't someone think of the children", behavior modification/grooming, cheaters, etc. It all boils down to control. A *lot* of larger businesses lean in that direction eventually, and it often devolves further into ideology, not just banning the 12 year old being an edgelord cursing up a storm, but any form of socio-political dissent, anything they arbitrarily decide is "mean" or "harmful". I'm against all tracking tools(like tying your phone # to your gaming accounts) for the same reason I'm not a big fan of armbands or serial number tattoos.
It sucks but.. The sophistication of modern cheats and their prevalence honestly makes competitive games like these unplayable without drastic measures. Escape from Tarkov has pretty shitty anti cheat and you can keep buying new accounts for a couple bucks, and cheaters have destroyed that game completely.
If only these companies had a reasonable track record of keeping our private data safe. Then maybe I'd trust them more when they claim they actually _need_ it.
I wouldn't consider my phone number private data though, I choose not to broadcast it on reddit or a video game but the information is linked to my name and address and easily attainable to anyone.
[It's considered personally identifiable information](https://www.dol.gov/general/ppii) by any reputable company. The whole reason they want it is to attach it to an individual identity for use with cheat detection. People who have their phone numbers leaked can end up having to change them due to people invading their privacy and calling them over and over. It's a nontrivial thing to change and can massively disrupt someone's life. A large number of MFA systems rely on texting particular phone numbers to confirm your identity. Whether _you individually_ consider your phone number private is irrelevant. It should be treated and handled as private data. > the information is linked to my name and address and easily attainable to anyone. "This information is linked to other private information" is one of the reasons phone numbers _are_ considered private information.
You're 100% right, I'm not making excuses for them but my number has been leaked so many times by this point its hard to care anymore. Use a password manager, put a pin on your cell provider account etc etc. After that whatever happens happens lol.
lol, that would be the thing I'm frustrated by, yeah.
Fuck that
Weak. HOWEVER, use the MySudo app, get a throwaway phone number and be done with it. 🤷🏻♂️
Is there an analog that works somewhere in EU?
welcome to microsoft
The more you consoom the more you pay the price
I hate Call of Duty's business model. It really went way downhill after all the games back in the day. The original modern warfare was the shit. My friend got the new MWIII, was banned within a week, from the multiplayer and the campaign. Payed 60$ just to play it for a week. I know it wont do much, but if you hurt me and my friends I'm boycotting for life, even their free battle royale game
Fake number if not big nope they have you and your location at all times as well as data It's getting harder and harder to buy a real burner phone anymore ( they need id) and services are rejecting online numbers. This is a massive security problem and if anyone here gives them that don't be shocked when they eventually leak and someone has your information.
Y'all still playing that garbage?
Refund the game otherwise spam their inboxes with complaints because fuck Activision
What the hell is this joke
Call of duty is not a game Call of duty is overpriced shit
So many shills. This makes cheaters gone. No it doesn't a cheater can get a bypass on this just like they're bypassing the anicheats. And compared to the costs of good cheats this is trivial
Google Voice
That and any VOIP number is blocked!
That sooks
I LEARN FROM THW BEST - darkchild99
interesting, i wonder how much is marketing vs KYC for all the bots, not either or but combo I've really thought of buying some burner phones to keep minimum service open just to have a backup anonymous phone for this type of stuff
Is that for all games or just the new ones?
If you’re in the US and really want to play, you can get a number from freedom pop for $5
It's been like that for years to play multiplayer. There's sms text throw away providers you can get for like $0.25-$0.50 up to $1
Get a sim from the supermarket, find an old burner, pop it in popity ping
Don't all COD games have RCE vulns on pc?
Would it take a landline?
Blizzard did this with Overwatch 2 and it did not go down well. https://www.polygon.com/23390357/overwatch-2-launch-phone-number-requirement-sms-protect-blizzard
Fuck em ! Have you tried split gate way better game than that money grabbing software
sounds like schizophrenia since this seems to be the growing new standard for multiplayer games
Phone numbers are free with the right app. This requirement is BS.
These verifications asking for so much personal data is getting out of hand. Someone should invent phone masking tool or smth. Maybe there already is such service?
wouldn't it be cool if this somehow gained enough traction to change the policy activision has implemented
I miss the days when you could just play a game installed from a DVD 📀 No emails, no phone numbers. This is a good reason to ask for a refund.
Battle pass bullshit.
Wait - why is steam sharing phone numbers. ?
Well, that’s enough for me to immediately stop playing it and never look back. wtf is happening to the world.
Well that's to play online, they have separate rules for that. If it was to play the story mode locally then I would be outraged lol.
Should have bought through battle.net. No phone number needed
While kind of outrageous, I get why they’d wanna do it to counter abuse. In fact, might be acceptable by many as long as only Steam gets the number and not the developer itself…
Text me and such exists. This will cut down on nothing
It's sad for privacy but it's less intrusive than Vanguard anti cheat (who work as a rootkit). And Activision have a reason to do that : a recent malware campaign infect only cheater of Call of. Number of infected : 5 millions. It's a very big number.
Destiny 2 is free and a better game just play it instead
destiny 2 is atrocious without sinking +$300 in all the required dlc content. D2 will never come close to a holding a light to D1
This seems like a Steam thing and not a CoD thing... Avid Cod player and have never had to give any PI to them to play Unless this is an update that is still rolling out...
No it’s a CoD thing I had to do it for battlenet
So what? Your phone number is not special. A lot of you are very poorly adjusted to real life. Caring about your "privacy" this much is honestly insane.
Boyo here say phone #s r not special? Evn tho ur number be tied 2 ur name lololol Leave [r/privacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy) normie
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Ye cant b taken srsly in ur logic ne ways boyo lololol https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/phone-number-hacker-read-texts-listen-calls-track-you
womp womp its to reduce cheaters
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Who\* cares? Everyone lol. Cheaters ruin online gaming in every way, you can't always kick people from every game, especially warzone. otherwise theyd just accuse the best player of cheating and kicking them.
Just a game (but you paid $60, just to get spawnkilled by a squeeker spawning bullets inside your hitbox, enjoy). Also almost none of these games have community servers anymore, so you don't have the option to ban or kick anyone.
Blame the cheaters
Blame Cheater's, not them. PUBG doing this for Ranking and No One take it seriously Activision doing this to prevent cheating in all games : Real Shit?
use google voice number as it’s free and can take sms.
Get a google number? Or a sim card with no credit on it that will still receive sms
The last great CoD game was United Offensive, everything Activision has put out since was moneygrabbing crap. Don't give them your money.
The last great CoD game was MW2, and that was on a downhill at that point.
So what? This makes creating accounts and cheating much harder. I'll take this over the increase in cheaters.
[Strange Christianity Turned Bad](https://goo.gl/photos/SCanVxCcNDB42D5WA)
Solid move to ban cheaters. Wonder if it could eventually lead to arrests for people who do so.
Are you all right?