Modern Warfare suicide stats suggest reverse boosting is a major issue

In-game suicide statistics from CoD Tracker suggest that Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is suffering from ‘reverse boosting’ on an unprecedented scale. 

With Modern Warfare Season 1 fast approaching, fans have quickly identified a number of aspects they want adjusting. While there have been complaints regarding Dead Silence and the absence of prestiging, there have been no complaints louder than those regarding matchmaking. 

Skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) has been a contentious topic in the gaming community for a number of years. It sees players put into matches with enemies of a similar skill level, supposedly to foster a more competitive environment. 

SBMM is a highly controversial topic.

A number of fans argue it punishes players for improving while protecting less-skilled players. It has not been confirmed to be part of Modern Warfare, but developer silence has fuelled community beliefs that it is part of the game. 

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Reverse boosting see players deliberately perform poorly in order to lower their K/D ratio. This then sees them put into matches with lower-skilled players.

The image below shows the top 15 players in the world for suicides, seeing some average over 25 suicides per match, and many feel it is hard to believe this comes from anything other than reverse boosting. 

The top 10 players in the world for suicides.

It seems to be far more than 10 players who are reverse boosting. Below is the table for players ranked 100-105 for suicides, with some averaging nearly 49 suicides per game.

Players 100-105.

SBMM is not confirmed to be in Modern Warfare, but players’ attempts to sabotage their own K/Ds suggests there is a serious issue with reverse boosting. 

Sustained efforts to commit suicide would ruin a person’s K/D enough to guarantee they would be placed against lower-skilled players for a considerable amount of time. 

Not only is it done to manipulate which enemies players come up against, but ruins matches for other players, who have to deal with an enemy or teammate killing themselves for an entire game.

Popular CoD YouTuber Drift0r has previously said that there is “some evidence” of skill-based matchmaking in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

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Developer silence since Modern Warfare’s release has contrasted to past years, when Treyarch and Sledgehammer both vehemently denied SBMM was a part of their games. 

It appears that players believe SBMM is in the game and are doing all they can to manipulate the system.