Activision has made a key change to player statistics which is impacting skill-based matchmaking trackers and other third-party apps. Statistics such as your kill to death ratio and total wins are now set to private by default, which severely hampers the effectiveness of applications that can track the skill levels of lobbies.
The change comes less than two weeks after popular skill-based matchmaking tracker website sbmmwarzone.com went live. The website tracks the skill ratings of your lobbies by looking at players’ wins and K/D – but this information is now hidden by default on players’ accounts. Hiding these statistics means that third party trackers like this can’t function properly and players logging on can’t tell the levels of their lobbies.
Players can head into their settings to enable these features, but only people who use applications like this will know that anything has changed. Skill-based matchmaking is always a controversial topic, and many players believe that Warzone kill records are being set in lobbies where experts face lower-skill players. Many players use third-party apps to evidence their cheating allegations, and claim that Activision’s change to statistic sharing is an admission of guilt on their part.
Many players are also annoyed that the change came a lot quicker than fixes to overpowered weapons such as the DMR and MAC-10. Both weapons have recently suffered nerfs, however, so if you’re looking for a DMR replacement, why not check out some of the other best Warzone guns?
Activision has made players statistics set to private by default, causing several issues with third party applications that used their API.
There is a workaround, but this comes just 11 days after the SBMM website https://t.co/PC9oBgEXnC was released.
Prob not a coincidence.
— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) January 15, 2021
The debate surrounding SBMM goes on – and will inevitably continue – but now it is more difficult than ever to see the strength of your lobby using third-party apps.