For years the complaint about Warzone was always the same: every lobby felt like a tournament, a good game was punished with a harder one, and playing with friends of a different level dragged everyone into matches that suited nobody.
That changed. Warzone moved to Open Matchmaking with Season 1 on 4 December 2025, following Black Ops 7. Skill is now minimally considered in casual playlists, connection and ping come first, and persistent lobbies are back. Most of what is still written about SBMM in Warzone, including an earlier version of this article, describes a system that is no longer running.
What Open Matchmaking actually changed
Under the old system, the matchmaker tried to put you with players of a similar level. Under Open Matchmaking:
- skill is minimally considered in casual playlists
- connection and ping are prioritised when building a lobby
- lobbies are far more mixed, and persistent lobbies came back
- ranked keeps matching on skill, which is the whole point of a competitive ladder
A Battle Royale or Resurgence lobby in 2026 therefore looks much closer to pre-SBMM Call of Duty: a genuine spread of levels, and the occasional match you have no business being in, in either direction.
An important correction
An earlier version of this article said Activision had "officially admitted" that its matchmaking is tuned to maximise engagement rather than fairness. That was wrong, and we should not have published it.
Activision has publicly denied using engagement-optimised matchmaking. What the company actually published, in two matchmaking papers in January and July 2024, is close to the opposite:
- connection is the most critical and heavily weighted factor in matchmaking
- time to match is the second
- skill is one input among several, not the driver
- input type (mouse and keyboard against controller) is also considered
The same article carried precise figures, on how many variables are tracked and how lobbies shift after a given number of kills, that we could not source. They have been removed rather than rewritten. Engagement-optimised matchmaking is a real concept and a real accusation from parts of the community, but an accusation is not an admission, and we presented one as the other.
What Activision found when they turned skill down
Activision also ran a test on roughly half the player base with skill matching progressively loosened, without announcing it at the time. Their reported conclusion was that matches got worse for most players, not better, which is why skill stayed in the formula for core multiplayer.
That is worth holding next to the Open Matchmaking change. The two are not contradictory: the paper is about core multiplayer, and Open Matchmaking is a product decision for casual Warzone playlists, where the priority is filling a 150-player lobby quickly on a good connection.
The bypass tactics, and why they no longer apply
Three tactics circulated for years. Here is where they stand now.
Reverse boosting, deliberately playing badly to crash your rating, was always against Activision's terms of use and risked the account it was meant to help. With skill barely weighted in casual playlists there is now nothing left to crash. We no longer recommend it, and we should not have recommended it before.
VPNs and region switching traded connection quality for softer lobbies. Since connection is the most heavily weighted input, this mostly degrades the matches it is supposed to improve: higher ping, servers in another region, teammates you may not share a language with.
Mode rotation was about giving the matchmaker less data per mode. With skill minimally considered, there is little left to confuse.
If a lobby still feels punishing, it is worth separating two things. Open Matchmaking makes lobbies more random, not easier. A random lobby holds plenty of players better than you, and without skill matching to smooth the curve, you meet them sooner.
The part Open Matchmaking did not fix
It changed who is in the lobby. It did nothing about who is in your squad, and in a battle royale that is half the game. A random trio is still a random trio, and a teammate who drops hot and leaves at the first knock costs you the match as surely as any stacked lobby did.
That is the part GameVerse works on: matching you on game, mode, region, cross-play and the way you like to play, relaxed or competitive, instead of whoever queued at the same second. You can look for a Warzone quad, a Warzone trio or a Warzone duo directly.
For the definition of skill-based matchmaking across the Call of Duty franchise, see what SBMM is in Call of Duty and Warzone. For how other games handle it, we keep a guide to matchmaking on the biggest competitive games.
FAQ
Is there still SBMM in Warzone in 2026?
Not in casual playlists. Warzone adopted Open Matchmaking with Season 1 on 4 December 2025, where skill is minimally considered and connection and ping are prioritised. Ranked queues still match on skill, which is the purpose of a ranked ladder.
What is Open Matchmaking in Warzone?
It is the matchmaking model Warzone took from Black Ops 7. Instead of building a lobby around your recent performance, it builds it around connection quality and time to match, with skill only minimally considered, and it brings back persistent lobbies between matches.
Did Activision admit its matchmaking is built for engagement?
No. Activision has publicly denied using engagement-optimised matchmaking. Its two 2024 papers state that connection is the most critical and heavily weighted factor, time to match second, and skill one input among several. An earlier version of this article claimed the opposite and was wrong.
Does reverse boosting still work in Warzone?
It is not worth attempting. It has always been against Activision's terms of use and risks the account it is meant to help, and with skill barely weighted in casual playlists there is no longer a rating worth crashing.
Does a VPN give you easier Warzone lobbies?
It mostly makes your matches worse. Connection is the most heavily weighted matchmaking input, so routing through another region costs you ping and puts you on distant servers, and since December 2025 there is far less skill matching left in casual Warzone to escape.