DICE is going to implement some form of SBMM (skill-based matchmaking) in Battlefield 6‘s multiplayer, but, if past talks are still true, it won’t be the same SBMM we’ve gotten used to. It’ll instead focus on team balance rather than matching the best with the best, like in CoD.
According to Insider Gaming, DICE has discussed BF6‘s multiplayer and specifically mentioned that SBMM will be implemented in the game to some degree. The report states SBMM will take ping, player location, server availability, and skill factors into account, though the exact way it’ll do it remains unclear.
As mentioned in the report, DICE has previously commented on SBMM implementation in Battlefield 6, saying the system is supposed to help create more balanced teams and function on the server rather than the lobby side.
This means that SBMM in Battlefield 6 would be an improved version of auto team balance, meant to aggregate the entire server and place players into relatively equal teams rather than to fill the entire server with equally skilled players like CoD does. This is staunchly different from most SBMM systems, where player rank, skill, win-loss ratio, and other characteristics are taken into account to match every player with others equal to them.
Battlefield has always been a franchise of dedicated servers and community-hosted gameplay, where no form of matchmaking existed, so it remains to be seen how DICE will exactly pull this “matchmaking” off.
At the end of the day, though, it won’t even matter so long as Battlefield 6 revives the series’ server browsing tradition, which seems more likely as release approaches. We’ll then have all the opportunities in the world to play wherever, however, and with whomever we want, caring little for skill-based matchmaking and other bells and whistles of modern live-service multiplayer games.
Published: Aug 3, 2025 12:50 pm