Tony Flame’s Twitter account, head designer of Call of Duty: Cold War, was hacked. However, the hackers surprisingly received a lot of support from followers.
This is what happened: On December 25, some strange tweets suddenly appeared on Tony Flame’s Twitter channel. He was apparently hacked and was not responsible for the posts.
While hackers are usually viewed negatively by the community, there was actually support here. The hackers demanded the removal of SBMM, meaning skill-based matchmaking.
Hackers receive thousands of likes
This was the tweet: The tweet has since been deleted, but quick fans managed to take a screenshot, which we include here:
The tweet translates to: “Activision, remove SBMM. You are ruining the game I’ve worked so hard on.”
This is how followers reacted: There was surprisingly a lot of support for the tweet. Within a short time, the tweet had over 6000 likes – compared to that, Flame’s normal posts often don’t even get 2000 likes.
There were also numerous comments agreeing. The top comment states: “Finally, the developers are reacting.”
Even under other posts made by Flame, there are voices regarding SBMM. For example, on December 25, Flame uploaded a picture and wished especially the “Christmas noobs” a Merry Christmas. There it was commented: “The Christmas noobs are hiding thanks to SBMM, I can’t find them.”
What about SBMM in CoD? This is a contentious issue and is brought up repeatedly in every CoD installment. Through skill-based matchmaking, players are placed in lobbies where similarly skilled players are present. In doing so, the performance of previous matches is especially evaluated.
You can’t really dominate and rack up points in a noob lobby. You always have strong opponents in front of you, which some players find disheartening. Especially stronger players feel they can never really relax, but must always push their limits.
Recently, in mid-December, there was an action against SBMM by some players. They intentionally played worse:
CoD Cold War: Players are currently playing significantly worse in protest
