A popular site used by thousands of fans to track skill levels across Warzone lobbies is being threatened with legal action by Activision if they don’t shut down operations.
The site announced they received letters from Activision’s legal team giving them until Monday to comply with their demands. Activision claim the API that SBMM Warzone are using is the reason for this action.
Skill Based Matchmaking has long being a cause for controversy in Warzone. The battle royale game doesn’t have an official ranked mode but for some reason still assembles lobbies based on players skill levels.
Fans took it upon themselves to figure out the match making system, and SBMM Warzone was a great tool to check and compare lobbies. Any account that has their privacy set to public can be searched, allowing players to check the skill level of every game they have played in. The game ranks lobbies from Bronze to Diamond based on their current K/D.
SBMM Warzone was using an Activision API to source the information for the lobbies, unfortunately this API is limited to Activision partners, and despite multiple attempts from SBMM Warzone to become a partner, the developers have denied the websites requests.
From their official Twitter account, SBMM Warzone reported that “Activision’s lawyers reached out and asked us to shut down sbmmwarzone.com” The developers [Activision] “want to guarantee their players’ privacy” which is why they limit the usage of their API to Activision partners (as per their ToS)
SBMM Warzone say that over the past few months they have reached out to Activision to request partnership, hoping to legitimise their service. Instead of responding to them, Activision instead reacted by replying with threats of legal action.
The site looks like it will comply with Activision’s requests, saying they will shut down if needs be but are trying their best to open a dialogue with Activision to reach an agreement.
The community have come out in support of SBMM Warzone hoping that a partnership can be reached.
With all the community support, hopefully the site can eventually overcome the potential legal action and continue to run a valuable service to the Warzone community.
