Blizzard announced back in November that it would stop selling the majority of its games in China and suspend game services on Jan. 23. It brings to an end a 14-year partnership with Chinese publisher NetEase, and will result in the very popular World of Warcraft MMO going offline for Chinese players.
“Blizzard originally made SMS Protect, which requires players to link a phone number to their Battle.net accounts, a requirement to access Overwatch as a way to make it harder for people to cheat or to troll others. It doesn’t always work with numbers associated with prepaid plans, though, and therein lies the problem. While some Mint customers were able able to link their numbers to SMS Protect just fine, players on Cricket seem to be completely locked out of the game. As Kotaku reports, fans feel like they’re being punished or shamed for ‘being poor.'”
