Bring Back Open Matchmaking — Keep Strict SBMM Out of Modern Warfare 4 Public Matches
A petition to Activision and Infinity Ward from the Call of Duty community
Call of Duty does not need every public match to feel like Ranked Play.

For many longtime players, one of the greatest parts of classic Call of Duty multiplayer was never knowing exactly what kind of lobby you were going to get.

One match you might dominate. The next might introduce you to somebody considerably better than you. Some games were extremely close. Others were blowouts. Sometimes you stayed in the same lobby for match after match, developed rivalries with other players, changed your class because somebody was destroying you, or teamed up with somebody you had just met.

That unpredictability was part of Call of Duty.

We are asking Activision and Infinity Ward to preserve that experience by making Open Matchmaking with minimal skill consideration the standard matchmaking system for casual public Multiplayer in Modern Warfare 4.

Strict skill-based matchmaking belongs in Ranked Play, where players specifically choose a competitive environment.

We've Already Seen a Better Alternative
Black Ops 7 demonstrated that Call of Duty can take a different approach.

Open Matchmaking allowed skill to be considered minimally rather than aggressively attempting to place players into similarly skilled matches every game. Persistent lobbies also helped restore something Call of Duty had lost over the years: the feeling that a multiplayer lobby was an actual group of players rather than twelve people temporarily assembled by an algorithm and immediately separated afterward.

For many of us, that was a significant improvement.

The success and renewed attention surrounding the classic Black Ops games also reminded a huge number of players what older Call of Duty multiplayer felt like.

Those games weren't built around making every public match feel competitively balanced.

They produced variety.

That variety is precisely what many players have been asking to get back.

Stop Changing Something the Community Didn't Ask to Be Changed
This is one of the biggest reasons this petition exists.

Call of Duty players have spent years going through a constant back-and-forth with matchmaking. One development studio takes one approach, another takes a different approach, and sometimes the philosophy changes within the life cycle of the same game.

The community is then expected to adapt again.

When a matchmaking system is working and players are enjoying it, why change it without the community asking for that change?

This frustration became particularly noticeable surrounding the later Black Ops 7 experience and now Modern Warfare 4. After Call of Duty demonstrated that Open Matchmaking could work, players once again found themselves debating stronger skill consideration.

We should not have to restart this conversation every year.

If a matchmaking philosophy is successful and well received, there should be an extremely compelling reason to fundamentally change it — and that reason should be communicated transparently to the people actually playing the game.

"The Data Says X" While the Community Says Y
For years, one of the most frustrating disconnects between Activision and portions of the Call of Duty community has been the reliance on internal data to justify matchmaking decisions while players describe a completely different experience.

We understand that Activision has enormous amounts of information available to it.

Retention matters. Match completion matters. Player population matters. Connection quality matters. Engagement matters. New-player experience matters.

Data matters.

But data should inform the player experience — it should not invalidate it.

If thousands of longtime players are saying, "These public matches feel exhausting," responding that internal metrics show the system produces better outcomes doesn't suddenly make those matches enjoyable.

We are the people actually playing those matches.

A spreadsheet can measure whether somebody stayed online for another hour. It cannot completely explain why that hour was fun, frustrating, memorable, exhausting, competitive or casual.

There is a difference between optimizing engagement and creating an experience people genuinely enjoy.

That distinction matters.

We're Not Even Experiencing the Same Call of Duty
This is perhaps the most important problem with aggressive skill-based matchmaking.

After the Modern Warfare 4 Beta, feedback from different portions of the skill spectrum demonstrated something fascinating: players weren't simply disagreeing about whether the game was good. They were describing fundamentally different gameplay experiences.

Some less-skilled players described matches that felt slow, passive and filled with players holding positions, waiting for opponents, using defensive equipment and avoiding unnecessary movement.

Meanwhile, players in higher-skilled matchmaking environments described almost the opposite experience.

Those matches could be incredibly fast.

Aggressive movement.

Constant sliding.

Jump challenges.

Rapid reactions.

Players aggressively pushing spawns and objectives.

Meta weapons.

Players moving and aiming as though every public match has something on the line.

How can one group describe Modern Warfare 4 as painfully slow while another describes it as exhausting because of how incredibly fast and competitive it is?

Because matchmaking can effectively create separate versions of Call of Duty.

And that should concern everyone.

SBMM Doesn't Just Separate Skill — It Separates the Community
At some point we have to ask what the word "community" actually means.

If players at substantially different skill levels rarely encounter one another because an invisible algorithm continually separates them, we're no longer experiencing the same multiplayer ecosystem.

We're being divided into different ones.

The lower portion of the skill distribution gets one version of Call of Duty.

The middle gets another.

Highly experienced players get another.

And each group can walk away from the exact same game with completely different conclusions about its pacing, difficulty and even how people play it.

That isn't simply matchmaking anymore.

That's matchmaking shaping the game itself.

The opponents you're allowed to encounter influence which weapons become effective, how aggressively people move, how quickly mistakes are punished, how often players challenge gunfights, how objectives are approached and ultimately how the entire game feels.

This is why telling players that internal statistics indicate matchmaking is working can be so frustrating.

Working for whom?

Which portion of the skill distribution?

Which version of Call of Duty?

Losing to Better Players Was Part of Becoming Better
We understand the argument for protecting lower-skilled players.

If someone repeatedly enters matches against players dramatically better than them, they may become frustrated and stop playing.

That's a legitimate concern.

But there is another side to this discussion that shouldn't be ignored.

For decades, encountering people better than you was a normal part of online multiplayer.

Many of today's experienced Call of Duty players weren't magically good when they started.

We got destroyed.

We encountered players we couldn't beat.

We watched killcams.

We changed weapons.

We learned maps.

We improved our aim.

We learned positioning.

We figured out what better players were doing and slowly became better ourselves.

Losing wasn't evidence that matchmaking had failed.

Sometimes it simply meant:

That player was better than you.

And that's okay.

Likewise, becoming better shouldn't mean an algorithm must immediately remove weaker opponents from your matchmaking pool until nearly everyone around you plays exactly like you.

There should absolutely be reasonable protections for brand-new players and extreme outliers.

But there is a massive difference between protecting genuinely new or struggling players and dividing the entire Call of Duty population into increasingly isolated skill environments.

Variety Is What Creates a Multiplayer Community
Imagine a public lobby containing twelve players of naturally different abilities.

Maybe there are two excellent players.

Several above-average players.

Several average players.

A couple below average.

Maybe one player is completely new.

That's a community.

The weaker player sees what the experienced player can do.

The average player has somebody to compete against.

The strong player encounters opponents capable of challenging them without every single gunfight becoming a competitive-level engagement.

And then the next lobby reshuffles everything.

Maybe you're the best player.

Maybe somebody considerably better joins.

Maybe your team gets destroyed.

Maybe you run it back against the same people and win.

That's variety.

The objective should not be ensuring that everyone wins.

It should be ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to experience the entire spectrum of Call of Duty.

Listen to the Players Who Have Been Here
Some members of this community have been playing Call of Duty for 10, 15, or even 20 years.

We've bought the games.

We've bought DLC.

We've played through great releases and disappointing ones.

We've spent thousands of hours learning the mechanics.

We've uploaded clips, streamed matches, made YouTube videos, posted on Reddit, shared TikToks, argued about weapon balancing, created memes, recommended the games to friends and kept Call of Duty in the gaming conversation year after year.

The core community has provided Call of Duty with something that can't simply be measured by a quarterly engagement statistic:

Culture.

That doesn't mean casual players don't matter.

They absolutely do.

A person playing Call of Duty twice a week deserves to have fun just as much as somebody playing every night.

But protecting the casual player should not require isolating the dedicated player.

And retaining the dedicated player should not require sacrificing the casual player.

We can have both.

That's exactly why Open Matchmaking makes sense.

If Standard Matchmaking Already Recreates Classic COD, Why Does Open Matchmaking Need Its Own Playlist?
This question deserves a straightforward answer.

Modern Warfare 4's Beta offered both Quick Play and Open Moshpit.

If the regular matchmaking system already delivers the variety and classic-style matchmaking philosophy being described to the community, then:

Why does Open Matchmaking need to exist separately?

What meaningful matchmaking difference exists between the two?

How much does skill influence one compared with the other?

Why do players report noticeably different experiences between them?

And most importantly:

Why can't Open Matchmaking simply be the standard public matchmaking system?

If Open Matchmaking produces the broader range of players associated with classic Call of Duty, then make that the default.

We shouldn't need a special playlist to experience what public Call of Duty matchmaking used to provide naturally.

Modern Warfare 4 Should Continue the Progress — Not Reverse It
Modern Warfare 4 has a lot of potential.

But for many experienced and higher-performing players, aggressive skill matching can make the matchmaking experience exhausting.

When a matchmaking system continually groups players based heavily on performance, improving at the game can feel less like progression and more like entering an increasingly competitive matchmaking bracket.

Get better.

Face better opponents.

Improve again.

Face even stronger opponents.

Eventually ordinary Quick Play can begin feeling less like casual Call of Duty and more like an invisible Ranked playlist — except without a visible rank, Skill Rating, divisions, competitive rewards or acknowledgement of the level of competition being imposed on the player.

That is the fundamental problem.

If players want a tightly controlled competitive environment where opponents are selected primarily around skill, Ranked Play already exists for exactly that purpose.

Public Multiplayer should serve a different purpose.

This Isn't About Good Players Wanting to Destroy New Players
The argument against strict SBMM is often reduced to:

"Good players just want easier opponents."

That oversimplifies the issue.

We're asking for variety, not guaranteed easy matches.

Open matchmaking means accepting the entire spectrum.

Sometimes you're the best player in the lobby.

Sometimes you're average.

Sometimes somebody completely destroys you.

That's okay.

That's how many of us became better at Call of Duty in the first place.

The important difference is that those outcomes happen naturally instead of every lobby being heavily engineered around your performance.

Reasonable protections can exist for brand-new players and extreme skill outliers without turning the entire casual multiplayer population into tightly separated skill brackets.

Connection Should Matter More Than Skill in Casual Multiplayer
A public multiplayer matchmaking system should prioritize:

Connection and ping.

Fast matchmaking.

Regional availability.

Playlist and input considerations.

And then use skill minimally where necessary.

We aren't asking Activision to pretend skill doesn't exist.

We're asking them to stop allowing it to define the experience of casual public Multiplayer.

Give Casual and Competitive Players Different Experiences
There is already a simple solution.

Public Multiplayer / Quick Play:

Open matchmaking with minimal skill consideration, strong connection priority, varied opponents and persistent lobbies whenever possible.

Ranked Play:

Strong skill-based matchmaking, visible Skill Rating, competitive rules, divisions, progression and similarly skilled opponents.

That gives players a choice.

Casual Call of Duty when they want casual Call of Duty.

Competitive Call of Duty when they want competitive Call of Duty.

Players should not have to play Ranked without a visible rank simply because they've become good at the game.

Our Request to Activision and Infinity Ward
Before Modern Warfare 4 launches, we are asking Activision and Infinity Ward to:

Make Open Matchmaking the default for casual 6v6 Multiplayer.
Reduce skill consideration substantially in ordinary public matches.
Prioritize connection, matchmaking speed and lobby variety.
Keep strict skill-based matchmaking primarily within Ranked Play.
Maintain persistent lobbies whenever technically possible.
Clearly explain how standard matchmaking and Open Matchmaking differ.
Publish meaningful matchmaking changes instead of quietly altering the experience during a game's life cycle.
Give community feedback meaningful weight alongside internal engagement data.
Stop unnecessarily separating the Call of Duty community into dramatically different gameplay experiences based on invisible skill measurements.
Protect genuine newcomers where necessary without turning the entire casual multiplayer ecosystem into hidden skill divisions.
Call of Duty doesn't need to guarantee that every player finishes every night with the same experience.

It needs variety.

It needs memorable lobbies.

It needs rivalries.

It needs players of different abilities interacting with one another.

It needs those games where everything goes right — and the games where somebody better reminds you that you still have room to improve.

And most importantly:

Listen to us.

We understand Activision has data.

We understand there are business considerations behind a franchise this large.

But we're not numbers on a spreadsheet. We're the people purchasing, playing, promoting and keeping these games alive year after year.

When your internal metrics tell you one thing while a significant portion of your dedicated community is telling you something different, the response shouldn't always be:

"The data says otherwise."

It should be:

"Why are our players telling us this?"

And when players at opposite ends of the skill spectrum describe the same game as though they're playing two completely different products, perhaps the question shouldn't simply be whether matchmaking is producing the desired numbers.

Perhaps we should be asking whether matchmaking has gone too far.

For those of us who have spent years — and in many cases well over a decade — playing this franchise, we aren't asking Call of Duty to go backward.

We're asking Activision and Infinity Ward to recognize something the classic games got right:

Not every match needs to be perfectly balanced to be fun.

Not every player needs to be protected from encountering somebody better.

And a community shouldn't be divided into invisible skill brackets just to satisfy an engagement metric.

If you believe public Call of Duty should prioritize connection, variety, persistent lobbies and player choice instead of strict skill-based matchmaking, sign this petition and share it with the Call of Duty community.

Bring back Open Matchmaking. Keep strict SBMM in Ranked. Stop dividing the community. Let public Call of Duty be unpredictable again.