Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-36122347-20180708165006

Everyone has noticed the recent change in the 2v2 matchmaking algorithm about a month ago. Many people reported being paired against opponents with much higher card levels/trophies. The disparity is larger than any previous matchmaking has ever been. Supercell has not divulged any meaningful details about the change.

At first glance, this bias seems mysterious and one-sided. Why would some accounts get consistently paired against higher card levels? Why wouldn't they run into lower levels? Who decides which accounts get favored?

The reason is an extra factor which is not mentioned in press releases: money. Remember that Supercell knows whether you've ever paid any money into your account to purchase anything. Your account is internally flagged as being paying or non-paying, and how much you pay.

Now, it's having an impact on who you get paired against, and what level they are. The current matchmaking is designed to pair up free (i.e. non-paying) accounts against paying accounts with higher level cards, essentially stacking the deck against free players.

The reasoning is simple: non-paying accounts never generate any income for Supercell, and they don't expect to make any direct profit off of them. But non-paying accounts are still useful as a source of "free labor". That is, as weak punching bags to set paying accounts against.

Supercell wants paying accounts to win, so that payers feel happier and are therefore more likely to continue paying. It's a classical psychological trick. They couldn't care less about whether non-payers become frustrated and leave the game; their source of non-paying "free labor" is endless. Thus, to effectively exploit their large pool of non-payers to generate profit, they set them up against payers with higher-level cards.

It's an efficient way to generate profits from your entire player pool. If you pair payers against other payers, half of them will lose and possibly become frustrated and stop paying. Better to shift this frustration onto the non-payers (whose satisfaction you care nothing for) and ensure that your entire pool of payers stay happy and keep paying/playing. This maximizes your profits.

It's also classic pay-to-win. And most conveniently for Supercell, it is done using a hidden mechanic to avoid public backlash. 