Controversial Warzone app changed to prevent players from avoiding SBMM
The controversial third-party Warzone Companion App for PC has been changed after players used it to avoid skill-based matchmaking and stream snipe.
The third-party Warzone Companion App developed by COD Stats is an excellent tool for finding out if cheaters are in your lobby. This app allows players to see the stats of all players in the game, from their rank to K/D ratio. So if you have a suspicious death, you can open the app and see the player’s stats to find out for sure.
However, due to some abusing the app, Competitive Warzone players and streamers alike have been up in arms against the software.
The competitive community has been especially concerned about this because of the nature of Warzone tournaments. Most tournaments have players play games in a time window, e.g three hours, and their top five games count towards a final score. With this app, players could see if a lobby’s K/D is too high, or ‘sweaty,’ and back out to find a lower-skilled match.
This gives players using the software a distinct advantage, as they can pick and choose their opponents, giving them an easier time. The purpose of a battle royale is for players of varying skill to fight to be the last man standing, but this app allowed you to ensure you’re always one of the best in the game.
However, as reported by Eurogamer, adjustments have been made to the Warzone Companion App following the backlash.
Warzone Companion App adjusted
Eurogamer spoke to Dmitry Shymko, the owner and developer of COD Stats, who revealed that in a patch on January 4, they changed how the app operates.
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After players and Overwolf, who hosts the app, asked the developers to make adjustments, you can no longer see the average K/D of the lobby until after the game has finished. On top of that, individual players’ K/D ratios will be hidden until after the warmup has finished. Values have also been adjusted to be relative instead of absolute.
After explaining the benefits of the app locating cheaters and helping players improve, Shymko told Eurogamer:
“Still, by understanding the importance of discussion we decided to make a change in our app to cut the place for any kind of abuse. Information about lobby players will be shown only after the warm-up, and the average lobby K/D value will be displayed only at the end of the match and the average lobby K/D value will be displayed only at the end of the match. These changes were already implemented in our app today.”
The only problem with this change is that you can no longer detect a cheater before a match begins. Shymko explained that he believes “that it still can be a good idea to leave at least information about who is a potential cheater during warm-up but for now, we want to have more feedback from users and what do they think about this option.”
The Warzone Companion App will continue to be updated in the future but for now, it appears it can no longer be as abused in tournaments.
Image Credits: Activision / Warzone Companion App