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The new system considers information from both a player's time in Counter-Strike and general behavior on Steam before placing them in matches.

Alissa McAloon, Publisher

November 15, 2017

1 Min Read

Valve has implemented a new matchmaking system into Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that considers information from both a player's Counter-Strike matches and general behavior on Steam when pairing them up for matches.

While Valve admittedly has additional resources at its disposal as the owner of Steam itself, the new system offers an interesting look at one way game developers are trying to clean up the toxic and cheat-ridden streets of online multiplayer games.

The system itself looks at what a player does on Steam to help it make informed decisions about which individuals will play nicely together in matches. So far, Valve says these 'Trust Factor' matches have seen fewer reports than matches created using the previous system.

The company hasn't given up the full list of things the Trust Factor system looks at, but it did say that it considers the behaviors and attributes of player's Steam account to determine their trustfulness.

The company has since experimented with using statistics like overall Counter-Strike: Global Offensive playtime, the frequency players have been reported for cheating, time spent playing other games on the same Steam account, and general progress toward being a "positive member of the Steam Community."

The system also doesn't replace the previous Prime matchmaking system entirely. Instead, it will build on Prime's phone number and level-based verification with the evolving list of additional statistics being considered by the Trust Factor matchmaking.

Valve isn't the only developer looking outside of games themselves to solve problems with cheaters and misbehaving players in online games. Recently, Blizzard took advantage of Xbox Live's built-in reputation system and moved to automatically mute players with an 'Avoid Me' ranking in Overwatch's built-in voice chat. 
 

About the Author(s)

Alissa McAloon

Publisher, GameDeveloper.com

As the Publisher of Game Developer, Alissa McAloon brings a decade of experience in the video game industry and media. When not working in the world of B2B game journalism, Alissa enjoys spending her time in the worlds of immersive sandbox games or dabbling in the occasional TTRPG.

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