SBMM Warzone responds to cheating allegations and rank criticisms

Nicholas Sakadelis
sbmm warzone

The popular website SBMM Warzone has responded to criticisms and cheating allegations regarding its strategy to rank lobbies.

Recently, the Call of Duty community has taken to popular website SBMM Warzone to get a general understanding of their own Warzone games. This website rates the skill level of Warzone games and separates the difficulty into skill ranks from Bronze to Diamond.

As a consequence, players have been using the website in an attempt to prove players are abusing the matchmaking system. Popular streamers have been targeted by upset gamers, claiming that because they get “bot lobbies”, they too must also be using an exploit.

Fortunately, we now have comment from SBMM Warzone directly to detail exactly how the tool works, and to clear up any misconceptions in the community.

SBMM Warzone home page as of January 2021

Why does SBMM Warzone Exist?

According to SBMM Warzone, the goal of their website is “to enable players to check the level of their Warzone lobbies and compare them to those of their friends and top players.” The website should in theory give players a general understanding of their own skill level in the bigger picture of players.

Does this tool prove streamers are cheating the Matchmaking?

One main issue is that players have been using this tool as a means to “prove” players are reverse boosting or using exploitative methods to get into easier games. Here’s their reply.

SBMM Warzone: “We’re not here to call anyone a cheater and we never will.

We understand that some people are rushing to conclusions when they see a top player in a Bronze lobby. A low-level lobby does not mean the player is cheating, reverse boosting or anything. It’s just that, in this particular game, he was playing an easy lobby. Sometimes you get easy lobbies, sometimes you get hard lobbies.”

Call of Duty Warzone image

How does SBMM Warzone calculate lobby ranks?

SBMM Warzone: “The lobby ranking is based on the median value of a lobby. We’ve aggregated the data for 100k+ lobbies. We sorted them by median team KD and divided them into 20 leagues (from Bronze 5 to Diamond 1).

We use the median because this is the mathematical tool that is most suited to evaluate this kind of data. We compared it to other metrics, such as average, top 20%, top 10%, etc. and it gives the best results and it’s easy to understand.”

Is this data reliable?

SBMM Warzone: “We consider that it’s a strong indicator of the difficulty of a lobby. More than that, every player can experience it themself by getting steamrolled over much more often in Diamond lobbies than in Bronze lobbies and, on the contrary, feeling like they are flying in Bronze ones.

Even Huskerrs in his yesterday’s Twitch stream said that he believed that world record we’ll all be Bronze lobbies, while it’s still possible to drop a 40-kill bomb, as he did yesterday.”

What can we expect in the future?

At this point in the interview, SBMM Warzone has informed us that they have just added a new feature adding more games to player histories. On top of this, there will also be a “Graphic representation of last 20 games and ability to see lobby rank from the profile page”. The tweet above shows a rough idea of what it will look like.

Like it or hate it, SBMM Warzone has made it clear they’re here to stay. Community feedback has so far been mixed, with streamer NICKMERCS even claiming “They’re not doing it right”. Ultimately, the choice to use and trust this information is up to you to decide. SBMM Warzone has made it clear they do not intend to be a tool used to accuse people of cheating or reverse boosting.

Image Credits: Activision