Your past experiences in Steam games and the time spent playing them will now factor into Counter-Strike: Global Offensive matchmaking

By Sherif Saed

Valve has rolled out a new matchmaking system for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that takes into account more than your skill in the game.

After the success of Prime Matchmaking – the most recent matchmaking iteration that only matched together players who have a unique phone number attached to their Steam account – Valve has moved on to a broader and less punishing algorithm.

The new system is dubbed Trust Factor, and the developer explains that it looks at the time you spent on Steam in general, whether it be playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or other games, as one of the variables it uses to decide your teammates and enemies. The system is live now, and the goal is for all players to generate less reports.

Reports generally mean a player is unhappy for one reason or another, and Valve says a trial run of Trust Factor has already proved successful. Among the previously mentioned items, the system also takes into account the number of reports (if any) generated against you, and their frequency

This is how default matchmaking is going to work going forward, but you can still opt in for the more traditional Prime Matchmaking and play with other Prime members – but only for the near future.

In the announcement blog post, Valve didn’t actually spell out all variables Trust Factor will be looking at so as not to have players unnecessarily worried about their behaviour in other games. And beyond that, these variables are constantly being updated, which would make any rigid list obsolete.

This is also why you won’t be able to check your Trust Factor rating. That said, the developer noted that being a “positive” member of the CS:GO and Steam’s community helps, though having a unique phone number – like what you need for Prime – will boost this rating. This essentially means that players new to the game may go in with a high Trust Factor for having behaved well in other games and on Steam.

Check the blog post link for more FAQs.