SBMM Warzone, a popular Call of Duty: Warzone site used for tracking skill levels in active lobbies, may not be long for this world; Warzone’s developer, Activision, has reportedly demanded that the site be shut down. Citing illicit usage of Activision’s API data, the company has given SBMM until Monday to comply with its legal order that the site cease operations entirely.
SBMM, or skill-based matchmaking, is the system in which Warzone players are grouped together in lobbies before rounds of gameplay, and is used in lieu of a ranked matching system. Since player stats are otherwise concealed from other players in the lobby, SBMM Warzone uses Activision’s API, or Application Programming Interface, to mine player stats and make them readily available for scrutiny. While it’s certainly not the first third-party site to provide this information, SBMM Warzone became a valuable commodity for determining a lobby’s overall skill, and ranks these lobbies accordingly. But Activision is reportedly none too pleased about this utilization and exposure of what it labels as private user data.
As a result, Activision has officially served the Belgium-based site with a cease-and-desist order, citing unlawful use of Warzone‘s API data, as the site is not a partner to Activision and is therefore bound by the company’s terms of service not to use API, especially for monetary gain. SBMM has allegedly reached out to Activision in the past on more than one occasion to request Partner status, but Activision has so far not agreed to it. So unless Activision has a change of heart in the next two days, as of Monday, SBMM Warzone will be officially shut down. The site’s founders are pleading on Twitter for its users or anyone at Activision to help it secure Partner status before it’s too late.
Activision’s lawyers reached out and asked us to shut down https://t.co/aX094FtqB8. According to their ToS, we can’t use their API. We’ve tried to reach them multiple times to become Partners, now is our last shot. Anyone working at #Activision, please reach out [1/7] ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/EBFNSee2R7
— SBMM Warzone (@SbmmWarzone) March 26, 2021
Vis-à-vis the cease-and-desist, the founders of the site maintain that they’re doing nothing illegal because they’re acquiring data that is already public. SBMM can only acquire data from players who have their profiles on Battle.net, PSN, or Xbox set to public. Therefore, SBMM doesn’t necessarily expose or farm data — rather, it curates data that is otherwise more time-consuming to obtain, especially in fast-paced gaming. While it is entirely possible that Activision’s beef with SBMM is also fueled by the fact that SBMM does make a profit from the site, and is therefore financially benefitting from private data, the founders report that the cease-and-desist letter contained nothing about monetization of the data, which is ironic, given that it would make a much more compelling argument for Activision than SBMM using otherwise public information.
While Activision isn’t exactly known for giving into player requests, there’s an argument to be made for SBMM, which has a significant membership count who would be especially put out if the site were to go under. But Warzone also has a major cheating problem that might be contributing to Activision’s reticence about access to its API. So in the meantime, players using SBMM had better start preparing to play Call of Duty: Warzone the old fashioned way, with just the lobby info that Activision deigns to give them.
Source: SBMM Warzone
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