Call of Duty Black Ops 6: what is SBMM and why do so many players dislike it?

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is approaching release, but the ghosts of the past are returning. The community is still up in arms against the multiplayer game’s matchmaking system. The unease started after the Modern Warfare reboot in 2019, and with the newest entry into the series the trend continues to pull in the same direction, at least as seen in its beta.

What is SBMM in Call of Duty?

The acronym SBMM belongs to the term Skill Based Matchmaking. What this system does is match you with players of similar skill to yours every time you search for a public match. If you have a high ratio you are going to play against people of the same scale. It is similar to what happens in competitive modes where you face players of a similar skill range, but only here is it transferred to the casual environment of the game.

This represents a gap in the conversation within the community. Some say that the system seeks to find a balance so that the most skilled players can play among themselves and free those who play at a lower level. The thing is that in general, the feeling is that in each game you always have to give your best. A more relaxed environment is expected from a casual meeting point, where you can even experiment with mechanics and other weapons outside your usual ones. In recent years that has not been the case.

Infinity Ward and the rest of the studios responsible for the saga have always maintained that this system has been used since the golden age of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. What the community perceives, however, is that its presence is stronger in recent years.

This summer the teams carried out a global test to demonstrate the validity of the current system. According to them, they deactivated SBMM in the United States for a few weeks to investigate the community’s reaction. Apparently, less skilled players abandoned many more games than before when facing a player from another division. Seeing themselves destroyed by them even led them to not step into any multiplayer modes.

Of course, even though results are negative for the health of the game for now, they do not rule out introducing game lists that dispense with this system in the future. In our opinion? The more options, the better.

Remember Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will arrive on October 25 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC. It will also be included in the Game Pass catalog from day one.

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