Infinity Ward promised that fans will soon learn all about the skill selection system. Mark Grigsby, co-director of the studio, personally responded to the concerned player and stated that the wait was not long.
Recall: CoD: Modern Warfare 4 was officially shown even before the start of major summer presentations like Summer Game Fest. Activision and Infinity Ward did not delay — they released the plot, characters, and even confirmed the return of Captain John Price.
The action this time will unfold on the Korean Peninsula. The local conflict is gradually growing and risks spreading to the whole world — a typical scale for the series. At the center of the action is an already familiar Price and a newcomer: Private Park, a soldier in the South Korean army. Together they will have to resolve the situation before it gets out of control completely.
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Updating network modes and DMZ in Modern Warfare 4
In addition to the single-player campaign (completely fresh, without replaying old missions), Modern Warfare 4 will receive a large set of multiplayer modes. And — attention — the return of the DMZ.
The regime, which many have already written off, has been redesigned from scratch. The developers themselves call it “the reference representative of the extraction shooter genre” in the Call of Duty universe. Is it loud? Maybe. But the facts are clear: dynamic weather changes, unique tasks, enemy units that move around the map in real time.
Infinity Ward’s official position on the SBMM system
And yet, for most fans, the main topic is the selection of players. The Call of Duty series has been arguing about the SBMM (skill-based matchmaking) system for years. It is enough to recall the wave of discontent after the release of Black Ops 7 — then the community was literally boiling.
Neither Activision nor Infinity Ward have yet given official comments on Modern Warfare 4. But this is temporary.
Grigsby, responding directly to the fan, promised: the studio is preparing to transparently and openly explain everything about the selection system. No water. All details are coming soon.
It’s hardly a coincidence. It seems that the developers decided to seize the initiative and form the information field themselves, before the rumors spread further than necessary.
The gaming community’s reaction to Mark Grigsby’s statements
Grigsby has not yet gone into the technical wilds. But the fact itself is that the studio has finally paid attention to the eternal SBMM issue. The community seemed to take it more with relief than with delight. Reactions, as usual, scattered in all directions.
Someone hopes that Infinity Ward has finally found the golden mean. Others are genuinely surprised: the studio head even condescended to answer an ordinary fan. Well, the most brazen ones immediately tried to get their hands on it — they bombarded Grigsby with questions about other game mechanics. “What about cross-play?”, “What about anti-cheat?”. It’s a familiar sight.
And most importantly, many players still dream of returning to the old, more “open” recruitment system. The same one that was in the previous parts of the series.
Principles of the algorithms for selecting players by skill
I’ll explain for those who are not in the subject. SBMM (skill-based matchmaking) is needed to bring players of approximately the same level into the lobby. In theory, this makes the matches more honest and intense. No one wants to be smeared on the map by professionals.
But there is a caveat. Many gamers prefer chaos. Unpredictability. When a rookie and a veteran can be in the same match, it’s fun, damn it. And let the serious showdowns remain for the rating modes.
The controversy surrounding SBMM in Call of Duty has been going on for years. Sometimes they escalate into a real war. It is enough to recall Black Ops 7, where the developers from Treyarch declared before the release: “SBMM will not happen!”. An open system has been introduced. But the fans still doubted whether it was really removed completely.
The impact of matchmaking in MW4 on different categories of gamers
The dispute about matchmaking in BO7 was resolved faster than we thought — and the results are, frankly, uncomfortable. The Internet loudly demanded open lobbies. But reality has put everything in its place. In December 2025, Treyarch studio dived into BO7 statistics and saw a surreal picture: gamers were massively dumped back into Standard Moshpit. Yes, that’s the playlist with the classic SBMM. The influx was so powerful that by the first season, the mode was dragged to the Featured tab. It turns out that the community settled exactly there, which it so actively disowned.
Infinity Ward also sees these metrics and takes them into account when developing MW4. The studio’s official verdict is encouraging: there will be no direct return to the ruthless matchmaking of 2019-2024. That is, the system is not being demolished to zero, it is being completely reassembled. The difference is huge.
Features of match selection for casual players
Let’s be honest, a typical casual is a hard worker who gets knocked up for an hour in the evening. He doesn’t memorize TikTok meta and has no idea what his K/D is. For these guys, SBMM turned every skating rink into a sweaty meat grinder. The algorithm instantly calculated their level and threw them to the same average players who were playing exclusively to win. No relaxation. Activision’s internal tests based on MWIII (2023) also proved that if you artificially inflate the difference in skill, people will fall out of matches. Low- and mid-level players are leaving. It’s a funny paradox, isn’t it? The audience was asking for chaos, but in practice, this chaos was suffocating it.
But the BO7 scheme gave a choice. The numbers don’t lie: casuals don’t get high from the Open Lobby because of free frags. They need a social network. Persistent lobbies do not shuffle the lineups after each battle, but retain familiar nicknames. Hello, the cozy atmosphere of CoD from the golden era of 2009-2012 — when public spaces were a place to socialize, not a sweaty workout.
It seems that if MW4 picks up the baton, the casual audience will pick up its ideal format: a minimum of tension and normal social connections.
Lobby settings for hardcore players and streamers
The situation is completely different here. For experienced streamer players, CDL fans, and cyber athletes with a KD above 1.8, public videos have long been a warm—up before ranking. And suddenly, the Open Lobby at BO7 seemed to them… bland. Ping rules the open playlist, and the skill only works as a weak tiebreaker. Hence the wild swings: you take one rink to the server solo, and the next one you drop off on a respawn. The streamers got into this (the clips wouldn’t cut themselves), but those who really wanted to sweat and grow quickly fled to Standard.
BO7 analytics revealed the base: people literally voted online for the Standard playlist with its SBMM. Checkmate to all the screamers from the forums who assured that “no one needs skill selection.”
For Modern Warfare 4, the conclusion is obvious. No one will leave the rating mode to its fate — it will remain an isolated ecosystem with harsh skill-matching, and not just a repainted public. Traichards will receive their fair ranking ladder and near-CDL content. To each his own.
Comparison of player selection systems in BO7 and Modern Warfare 4
The main lesson that Infinity Ward has obviously learned from Treyarch’s tests is that pushing the entire player base into one framework is a fatal mistake. And it’s not about the crooked code. Ordinary hard workers and esports players are looking for completely different experiences in public. MW4 is already intriguing, promising to save the best chips of recent years: here you will find a dynamic movie, classic Prestige, and red dots on the minimap along with voting for the card. This is the base that sets the pace. But the final piece of the puzzle will be the matchmaking system itself — Grisgby promised to reveal all the cards by October 23, 2026. We wait.
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