To understand the problem you have to look at OW 2016 vs today. In 2016 the game had half the heroes, fewer maps, 2016 graphics/lighting, fewer game modes, and some of the heroes were completely different than what they are in 2022.

When they took away team stacks in QP they did not call it OW2. When they enforced 2-2-2 they did not call it OW2. When they added deathmatch, team DM, lucio ball, mei snowball, etc they didn't call it OW2. When they upgraded the lighting they didn't call it OW2. When they completely changed Symmetra (twice) and Mercy and Torb they did not call it OW2. When they added competitive and changed it to enforce 2-2-2, it was still OW1. When they added 10 heroes it was still the same game.

But when they went to f2p and added a battlepass, suddenly it's OW2. Suddenly it's a completely different game that has nothing to do with OW1. Obviously that's silly. We know it's a cash-grab and attempt to sell something old as something new.

For some reason the breadtube-brained media critics whose first exposure to leftism is "when game companies mess with my treats" seem to agree with Blizzard that OW2 is a fundamentally different game. Because the icon on the launcher changed. And if you disagree, you're a radlib pmc karen treatbaby stan and @UlyssesT is gonna subtweet you in every thread for the next 6 months. Because he read a blogpost from some dipshit calling Blizzard crumulant fuckcrustables and thought it was really biting criticism.

Blizzard is bad but not because you have sour grapes over OW2. They're bad because they extract surplus value from workers to generate massive profits and pay sex pests a high salary to manage projects such as "What if we added weapon charms and charged money for it?" I know a lot of you became leftists when you realized companies do stuff to make money at the expense of user experience, but that can't be the center of your criticism. User experience is beside the point, it's about the workers.

So no they didn't shut down OW1. If OW2 is a completely different game then they shut down OW1 when they started making huge changes in 2017. You haven't been playing OW1 since then.

And yes, if you have a prepaid phone or no phone at all you can't play OW1 reskinned. That's their pathetic attempt to get rid of toxicity and cheaters. But really it's a way to lock out people who probably won't buy battlepasses anyways. If you don't link a phone from an actual carrier to your account, OW1/1.5/2/etc is shut down for you. They don't verify the phone number when you buy their shit, oddly enough.