Blizzard has issued an apology for the 'Overwatch 2' launch issues.

Upon its launch on October 4, the sequel to the 2016 shooter game was hit by two targeted attacks on its servers, among other hiccups.

Blizzard president Mike Ybarra confirmed the first "mass" DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, and another followed.

The company has now issued an apology and set out how it plans to tackle some bugs.

The firm said: “While millions of people have been enjoying the game, the launch has not met your, or our, expectations.

“First, we want to apologize to our players. We expected the launch of Overwatch 2 to go smoothly. We hold ourselves to a higher standard and we are working hard to resolve the issues you are experiencing.”

Among the issues, the two-factor authentication system, SMS Protect, will be removed for the “majority of existing Overwatch players" from October 7, after many got thrown out of their accounts.

Blizzard said: “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.

“We remain committed to combating disruptive behaviour in Overwatch 2—accounts that were not connected to Battle.net as well as new accounts will still have to meet SMS Protect requirements."

Blizzard has also reassured players that no data has been wiped and they simply need to carry out the transfer process, though they have a "client-side fix" on the way.

They said: “In the other half of reported cases for this issue, things are just taking longer than expected for items from the original Overwatch to transfer and populate in Overwatch 2.

“In all cases, no player data has been wiped or lost. We have a client-side fix for this that cannot be deployed until next week, so we are exploring server-side fixes and will provide updates as more information becomes available.”

It also confirmed an issue with heroes and items being locked when they shouldn't, and it advised players to log out and back in as this has fixed the problem on the whole.

Blizzard added: “We have seen relogging into the game resolve this issue in most cases. If you’re still experiencing this issue after taking these steps, please open a support ticket, that data is very helpful for our team.”