While Call of Duty: Warzone’s SBMM information is not public, players can still track their and their lobbies’ public stats using a variety of services. Randomly, all of these third-party services have been broken as Activision privatized all player accounts.
Skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) services are used in games for a variety of reasons. Some players like to check how strong the K/Ds in their lobbies were to contextualize how well they performed. Some players like to check if someone they suspected of cheating was actually doing so (most prominently during major tournaments).
The sites that track this data do so using Activision’s Warzone API and can only do so for players who have manually set their accounts to public. There was some drama with these sites in the past, but most have run smoothly in the months since.
But on July 2, players realized that they cannot access data, tournament competitors couldn’t check on cheaters, and some tournaments were even canceled. As beloved stat site, WZStats, explains, Activision have suddenly made all accounts private.
The stats you love are currently inaccessible. It seems like all public accounts are now private. We don’t know whether that’s intentional. A lot of us are relying on these stats to get better at the game and we’d love to hear back from @Activision or @RavenSoftware on this issue
— Warzone Meta (@WZStatsGG) July 2, 2021
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Noting that “the stats you love are currently inaccessible,” WZ Stats revealed that all player accounts had been made private. This means that everyone who manually set their account to public, for the sake of SBMM services, has suddenly had that reverted.
WZ Stats expand that they are unsure whether this move was intentional or not, but they have yet to hear a response from the developers about it.
In the replies, across social media, and on Twitch — numerous complaints have been made. A few players even noted that all Z League tournaments today have been canceled due to the inability to check K/Ds.
It’s unclear precisely what the developers intend with this change, or even if they intended it at all. What’s clear is that there’s a demand for these services and players appear unhappy to have their preferred sites shut down.
