Activision keeps frighteningly granular data on your Call of Duty gameplay - here's how to see it

In context: Call of Duty fans have been up in arms over the franchise's skill-based matchmaking system for years now. The multiplayer matchmaking tries to group players of similar skills together for more balanced matches, but many skilled players have raged that it forces them into brutally tough "sweatfests" matches.

The complaint here is that Activision has kept everyone's actual skill rating hidden behind a curtain. Players have been left guessing where they rank compared to others based only on anecdotal experience. But now, a YouTube exposé has let the cat out of the bag on how to access your real skill score.

Prominent CoD creator TheXclusiveAce showed a sneaky method to request your detailed matchmaking data from Activision, including your all-important skill rating for every single match going back years.

You can request this data through Activision's privacy and data protection page, likely established to comply with strict European data privacy rules.

Once you get the info (it takes a day or two to arrive), it's an absolute goldmine of numbers. Activision retains gameplay data going way back to COD: Vanguard, which was released in 2021.

It's excruciatingly detailed too, breaking down your details on every multiplayer match, including your map, mode, bullets fired, accuracy, operator skins, execution moves, damage stats, and more. But most crucially, it reveals your behind-the-scenes skill stat that determined which lobbies you were matched into.

For TheXclusiveAce, his skill rating for the recent Black Ops 6 hovered around 400 for most of his time with the game. But it fluctuated quite a bit too, occasionally spiking up or plummeting based on his recent performances. The raw numbers could finally lift the veil on how SBMM works under the hood.

TheXclusiveAce thinks the ratings are influenced by the overall skill level of the lobby you're in. If the matchmaking system expects you to perform at a certain level compared to that lobby's rating and you fall short of that bar, your rating could still dip even after a solid game. But if you exceed the expected performance, your rating receives a slight bump.

Last year, Activision tried to explain SBMM in vague terms, saying it's a "fluid measurement" of your overall kills, deaths, wins, modes played, and recent matches across all multiplayer experiences. But seeing the actual numbers finally brings some transparency to how it likely operates.

Now that the data is out, the Call of Duty community is going wild analyzing and comparing everyone's unveiled ratings. The top comment under Ace's video says that "trash talkers are about to become data scientists." That may sound like an exaggeration, but it's not difficult to imagine players obsessively tracking their stats and comparing them with others.