Drift0r reveals Warzone ‘bot lobby’ exploit players have been abusing

Nicholas Sakadelis

YouTuber Drift0r reveals an exploit that players have been abusing to avoid the SBMM system in Call of Duty Warzone.

Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) is a system buried in the core Call of Duty Warzone experience to ensure players compete against opponents similar to them in skill.

For many players, this system lurks in the background, unnoticed as they improve at 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 constantly be the best, many have tried different methods to make the SBMM system less strict or absent altogether. By doing this, some high-tier players have chosen to purposefully get into games against low-skill opponents, thus making their gaming experiences much easier as well.

For many months, a select few players have held a dark secret about Warzone, possessing the ability to play in “bot lobbies”. In a YouTube video, content creator Drift0r gives the community a stern warning about this exploit.

Competitive Integrity Issues

According to Drift0r, a select few members of the community have shared a method with him on how to get into these “bot lobbies” on a fairly consistent basis. Drift0r has verified this method and confirms that it results in significantly easier games a majority of the time.

Due to the nature of this exploit, the competitive integrity of kill races has come into question, since anyone could have used this when large prize pools were on the line.

While a vast majority of the competitive Call of Duty Warzone community upholds a good sense of sportsmanship in competitions, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that some could have abused this.

Of course, this does not automatically mean your favorite content creators and competitors have been abusing this all along. Apparently, only a small amount of players know how to do this glitch, and have been keeping it secret all along.

Drift0r has reported this bug to Activision, and it’s expected to be fixed in the future. He refuses to share the information publicly, as it can damage the overall gameplay experience of Warzone. If all players begin to abuse this bug, it will lead to significantly unbalanced Warzone games, placing great players against below-average players.

Before it’s officially fixed, there is a possibility more players will go searching for the exploit and ultimately find it. Hopefully, Activision takes action before that becomes a reality.