YouTuber Drift0r reveals an exploit that players abused to avoid the SBMM system in Call of Duty Warzone.
Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) is a system buried in the core of Call of Duty Warzone experience to ensure that players compete against opponents similar to them in skill.
For many players, this system lurks in the background, unnoticed as it improves the game. For the best players, this sometimes leads to frustrating game sessions against other highly skilled players.
Due to the competitive nature of Warzone and the need for some to be consistently the best, many different ways have tried to make the SBMM system less stringent or absent. In doing so, some players at the highest level have chosen to deliberately fight in matches against opponents with low skill, which also makes their player experiences much easier.
A few select players kept a dark secret about Warzone for many months and possessed the ability to play in ‘bot lobbies’. In a YouTube video, creator Drift0r gives the community a serious warning about this exploitation.
Competitive Integrity Issues
According to Drift0r, a few select members of the community shared with him a method of getting into these ‘bot lobbies’ on a fairly consistent basis. Drift0r verified this method and confirmed that it results in significantly easier games most of the time.
Due to the nature of this exploitation, the competitive integrity of murderous races was called into question, as anyone could use it when large prize pools were at stake.
While the vast majority of the competitive Call of Duty Warzone community maintains a good sense of sportsmanship in competitions, that does not rule out the possibility that some might abuse it.
Of course, this does not automatically mean that your favorite creators and competitors have already abused this content. Apparently only a small amount of players know how to make this mistake and keep it a secret all the time.
Drift0r has reported this bug to Activision and it is expected to be fixed in the future. He refuses to share the information publicly as it could damage Warzone’s overall gaming experience. If all players start abusing this error, it will result in a significantly unbalanced Warzone game, which will put excellent players against players below average.
Before it is officially corrected, there is a possibility that more players will go looking for the exploitation and will eventually find it. Hopefully Activision takes action before it becomes a reality.