Supportsoft Glossary

Matchmaking: Balancing Competition

Matchmaking is the hidden referee. Its job is to find 10 people who are roughly the same skill level and have good internet connections, and throw them into a game together. If it fails, you get "stomps"—where one team destroys the other. That’s not fun for anyone.

It’s a trade-off between speed and fairness. Do you want a perfect match in 5 minutes, or an okay match in 10 seconds? Usually, we widen the search over time. If you need a game developer in Sydney for multiplayer, we write logic that handles this, dealing with "smurfs" (pros on new accounts) and filling empty spots so the game keeps moving.