summarize the text:  What's up guys my name is Ace and today I just wanted to make a quick video talking about my thoughts on this whole situation where Activision has essentially restricted the API Considerably and this means it's now much more difficult to have a look at your stats and the stats of your enemies Using sites like Cod tracker or SBMM warzone for instance Which have been really cool tools to be using, especially in the past couple weeks. A lot of these new websites have been popping up where you can look at the distribution of your recent lobbies that you've been playing in to see just how skilled overall those lobbies are. And in one case, there was even an app that allowed you to track the stats of your lobby in real time. So like the moment you get into the lobby, you can see all the players that are in your lobby as well as their basic stats. So you could see how difficult that lobby was. And with that one, a lot of people were using that to lobby shop in Warzone. So earlier this past week in an update, Activision basically set everybody's account to private when it comes to displaying their stats on the API. And it's now something you have to actively go in and opt in on, which 99% of the community won't be doing because most of them won't even know that you can do it. And then for many other people, like you guys that are watching the video here, you'll hear about it, but you won't be bothered to go in and opt in on that because unless you're using those sites, what's the incentive for you to opt in? So essentially, now that the stats of the vast majority of players is hidden by default, all of these websites are basically useless now at this point it seems. I guess they're still okay if you just want to track your own personal stats, you want to see much more detailed stats than what you can see in the in-game combat record for instance. But I do find this to be really frustrating because these apps, especially in Warzone, were excellent for first up detecting if you had cheaters in lobbies. These were great for spotting a cheater and really confirming that somebody was cheating. Like, if they had an 80% headshot accuracy, for instance, or like a 50 KD or something stupid like that, then it's pretty obvious that that's a cheater that you ran into. And it was just great to be able to confirm that and actually see for yourself, because sometimes you don't get the opportunity to spectate. And also, I just find it interesting to see, like, just how often you do run into cheaters. Then, outside of the more traditional cheating, like aim bots or wall hacks and stuff, this was also great at finding people that were exploiting the matchmaking system, especially YouTubers and streamers, in order to get world records, or even in some cases they were exploiting it in tournaments and winning tons and tons of money by exploiting the matchmaking system. Although at the same time I will say that that did lead to a lot of witch hunts on people where it wasn't necessarily obvious that they were exploiting matchmaking and there were other factors involved but at least in some cases it was very clear that they were doing something to manipulate matchmaking and I personally think it was great that a lot of these people were being exposed, especially the people that were playing in tournaments for a ton of money. Additionally, these tools were great to show you your own personal stats and the types of lobbies that you tend to play in, especially from that SBMM Warzone website, which shows you the distribution of your recent lobbies, and it would show you just how difficult those lobbies are based on the average and median KD within that lobby. The reason this tool is great is because with the skill-based matchmaking system they use, everything is hidden in the background. So it's always hard to tell sort of where you stand when it comes to your skill level in Warzone because you don't really know which lobbies you're playing in without these tools. You don't know if you're playing in the absolute top tier lobbies against a bunch of amazing players or if you're more on the lower end or maybeies against a bunch of amazing players, or if you're more on the lower end or maybe even somewhere mid-range, you don't know where you stand. So these tools were great to sort of uncover the skill-based matchmaking system a little bit and provide much better insight as to where you stand in the community based on your stats, because you could actually see the types of lobbies you've been playing in. Additionally, and I think this is actually one of the reasons they disabled the API, one of a few reasons, I think it really opened a lot of people's eyes to the skill-based matchmaking system. I think for many people they knew there was some skill-based matchmaking in the game, but they didn't really understand the extent of it until these sites came out and you could see it for yourself, plain as day, how the lobby distributions were working and just how different playing in a bronze lobby is compared to playing in a diamond lobby. It's honestly like playing a completely different game. So if you can't tell already, I personally am quite frustrated that they did this, that they just sort of swept everything under the rug by making everybody's stats private by default and now you have to opt in on that, and it essentially just destroyed these sites overnight. So now it's much more difficult to see or confirm if there's hackers in your lobby. It's much more difficult to find streamers and YouTubers that are exploiting the system and essentially cheating the system that way, especially for tournament players. Tournaments could have started using the information from these sites to determine if people were exploiting matchmaking during a tournament, and if it was obvious they were, then they could have used that to disqualify them. But now that all of this is hidden, they're not going to be able to do that, or it's not likely they're going to be able to do that, and I feel like this is going to lead a lot of people that play in these tournaments to exploit even more, because they're going to feel like if they don't do it, then the people that are doing it are just going to end up winning, and in order to stay competitive with them, then they have to be doing the same sort of thing and since nobody can track it anyway then they might as well be doing it. So yeah I really think a big part of the reason they decided to make this change and make it so these sites just don't work anymore is it's just much easier than tackling the root causes of these issues instead of actually looking at potentially changing up the skill based matchmaking system and how it works or being more transparent and upfront about how it works so that players at least can feel a little bit better about it, like maybe provide us ranks in game or an elo score. And also, now it's much more difficult to see that there's a cheater in the lobby, and so instead of investing more resources in developing a proper anti-cheat system, it's better to just sweep it under the rug and make it harder for players to see when there is a cheater in the lobby. So yeah, I'm definitely really frustrated with this, and for me, it really makes me think, like, why don't we all just start exploiting matchmaking? If they refuse to even acknowledge the root cause of our frustration and our issues, and instead of allowing the community to have these tools to sort of figure it out for ourselves, they decide to instead just get rid of them completely, without even acknowledging the root cause, why should we care about following their rules? They've now made it easier so it's less detectable, so people aren't going to catch you if you do it, so why not do it, right? Now that's not me saying that I am going to start exploiting matchmaking, but it really does raise that question. Why should we care about that if it's clear that they don't? If they're going to continue to just sweep this under the rug and essentially pretend that this system doesn't even exist, then why should the community feel bad about exploiting this system that apparently doesn't exist in the first place? Seems like you might as well, which is sort of the logical conclusion to all of this. Now, I do want to make one note here. There's one positive aspect to this that I kind of like, and that is the fact that it has shut down the real-time tracking apps. I don't agree with having a real-time tracker that allows you to see what kind of lobby you're in before the game even starts. Like when you get into a game, you can quickly check what that lobby looks like, is it going to be an easy lobby or a hard lobby? And if it looks like it's going to be a hard lobby, then you can just back out and try again until you end up getting an easy lobby. So it essentially allows you to lobby shop with really good accuracy. You're not just guessing based on like the names of the players you see pop up in the lobby. You see their actual stats in real time. That part, I'm totally fine with being gone. If there was a way to disable that while still allowing us to see our stats after the matches, I think that would be great. And that would have been the best solution in my mind. But that is just my opinion on this whole situation, I'd like to know in the comments section below, what do you guys think about the fact that now in order for your stats to be public, you have to actively go in and opt in to that, which has effectively destroyed all of these API based sites. Are you happy they did this, frustrated or upset that they did this, or are you just kind of indifferent, are you somebody that didn't really use these and just don't really care about this? Just let me know all of those thoughts in the comment section down below. If you enjoyed the video, a like rating is always appreciated. And don't forget to subscribe for more if you haven't already. I'll talk to you guys next time. Thanks for watching!