Skill-based damage has been one of the most toxic conspiracy theories floating around the Call of Duty community for years. The idea that the game secretly adjusts how much damage your bullets deal based on your skill level or SBMM bracket has fueled endless Reddit threads, YouTube videos, and mid-game rage quits. Now, the director behind Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has come out and said it plainly: it is not in the game.
What the director actually said
The statement came directly from the Black Ops 7 game director, who addressed the skill-based damage question head-on in response to community concerns. The confirmation was unambiguous: your bullets deal the same damage regardless of your skill level, your SBMM placement, or how well you have been performing in a match. There is no hidden modifier adjusting your time-to-kill based on who you are or how good you are playing.
Here's the thing, this is the kind of direct communication the Call of Duty community has been asking for a long time. The franchise has historically been tight-lipped about its matchmaking systems, which only fed speculation. A flat denial from the director carries more weight than a community manager post or a vague blog update.
Why this rumor took hold in the first place
The skill-based damage theory did not come from nowhere. Players noticed that in some lobbies, their shots felt inconsistent, that enemies seemed to absorb more bullets than usual, and that performance could swing wildly between matches. Combined with frustration over skill-based matchmaking itself, it was easy for players to connect dots that may not actually be connected.
The key here is understanding what SBMM actually does versus what players assume it does. Matchmaking can absolutely affect the feel of a game by placing you against tougher opponents, which makes your performance look worse statistically. That is a very different thing from the game literally changing your weapon damage values. One is a design choice about lobby composition; the other would be a fundamental manipulation of core game mechanics.
The community conflated the two, and the result was a persistent belief that the game was actively working against skilled players.
What this means for Black Ops 7 going forward
Black Ops 7 has had a difficult reception. The game launched to the franchise's worst Steam debut to date and has struggled to hold onto its player base, sitting at a Mostly Negative rating on Steam based on just over 2,000 English-language reviews. Activision publicly acknowledged the situation in a December 2025 blog post, stating it knows what players expect and promising to "deliver, and overdeliver" on those expectations going forward.
Addressing the skill-based damage myth directly fits into that broader effort to rebuild trust with the community. Whether players accept the denial is another matter entirely.
danger
Skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) and skill-based damage are two separate systems. SBMM affects who you play against. Skill-based damage, as the director has confirmed, does not exist in Black Ops 7.The trust problem Activision still has to solve
Even a direct denial from a game director may not fully close the book on this one. The Call of Duty community has spent years developing a healthy skepticism toward official statements, and given how long Activision stayed silent on SBMM before eventually confirming its existence, that skepticism is not entirely without basis.
What most players miss is that the real issue is not whether skill-based damage exists. It is that the game's feel has become inconsistent enough that players went looking for an explanation. Fixing the perception means fixing the underlying experience, not just issuing statements.
Activision's promise to stop releasing back-to-back Black Ops and Modern Warfare entries annually is a start. But the community will be watching whether those words translate into a meaningfully different product whenever the next entry arrives. For now, the director's statement gives Black Ops 7 players one less thing to worry about, even if the broader conversation about the franchise's direction is far from over. Make sure to check out more:
