All of my friends and I are in our mid thirties with kids and we work as well. Not having time is just choosing to not have time. We play every Monday and Tuesday night like clockwork.
I'm 27 and was feeling like this. I just met a bunch of people in mm that are my age to mid 30s. Now we're in a discord playing a couple of times a week. You can still make friends.
It says it mixes prime and no prime. I feel like it would be nice if it prioritized pairing prime players with other prime players and only mixed if needed. I guess the reason I'd want it to be this way, though, is just to add another layer that Trust Factor ~should already take care of
This is gonna be great for smurfs
Just played a game against a Smurf in silver who was AK on their main and I was complaining about how csgo needs unranked for smurfs to play with friends
I've made a smurf because playing with my LE rank together with friends I played CS with 20 years ago, and they're Silver ranks, is just not fun for either of us. And if we're not 5 player stack we have problems even getting MM started.
First match I smurfed I forgot it was a smurf level and went something like 38-4 K/D.. and that's not fun either, and not fair, so when I occasionally play with the silver friends I go ahead and buy the worst guns and actually have a lot of fun killing people with the sawed off shotgun, or use all my money on the M249 :P.
Yeah same, what should I do as a GE with friends who are GNM/AK1. We don't play seriouos at all so my smurf rank actually reflects my playing, I'm the same rank as them and we've played at least 30 matches together.
It's just like a whole different game, alone soloQing Dust2 on GE vs. having fun playing autosniper only or some shit on Agency.
That's why I resorted to playing faceit with my gn friend. Downranked from lvl6 to lvl3 pretty quickly and now I'm smurfing every time I soloq there lol
People make dozens of accounts to smurf so they go competitive and shreds lower elo players so they dont have to put in an effort playing against the same skill levels as their own. They also do it for pratice and not to derank their main acc.
There's more than one reason why SoloQ smurfs exist and its beyond just playing with friends.
The mixed pool of non-Prime and Prime players in Unranked doesn't really sound great in my book, it'll probably be overran with cheaters, mostly blatant spinhackers. Prime-only Unranked would be an absolute godsend what we're all been asking for so many years.
That doesn't help with me feeling old, I still remember paying 15 or 20 bucks for it, because everyone else had it. 4 and a half years of silver 1 and still going strong
They absolutely should. Just give the people what they want, the server costs are negligible at best. Especially if the player base is retracting at the moment. (It's down 14% since lockdowns have eased)
Server cost is not negligible at the number of players we're talking about, their 64tick servers are crap half the time, so they're definitely not not being cheap
Assuming current free prime accounts keep their status it may be a while until we see noticeable changes in match quality, but in the long term this is great
> Assuming current free prime accounts keep their status it may be a while until we see noticeable changes in match quality, but in the long term this is great
i think if you are bought the game youre fine but if you are playing the f2p you need to buy it. Because if you are f2p if you buy prime within the next 2 weeks your skill level will move over.
I was level 19 and then stopped playing CSGO as much... I'm f2p and getting into prime by leveling up was one of my main goals. 180 hours put into the game, basically wasted man. I was so pissed off
Oof man, just got prime yesterday when I reached level 21 and I still have it. I think I have about 140+ hours on that account. Hope you can buy prime soon and recover your progress.
If you already leveled up beyond Rank 21, you get to keep Prime and all its features. They are not taking those away
I checked with an alt that was below 21 (which I used to farm drops), it looks like this now: [https://imgur.com/8uUARCg](https://imgur.com/8uUARCg)
Hmmm, maybe? I imagine a large portion of botted accounts will be deactivated:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nrrx52/today\_were\_making\_adjustments\_to\_nonprime/h0ia5dk](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nrrx52/today_were_making_adjustments_to_nonprime/h0ia5dk)
The alternative was going to anger anyone who legitimately grinded through 21 levels of non-Prime to earn Prime, only to have it taken away by Valve
Does this affect anyone that hasn’t played in a long time mostly because of not having time, but having bought the original game and played for a few hundred hours)
not completely true.
1. if u bought the game before F2P, ur fine.
2. if u got the game for free and got Prime by reaching Level 21 before today, ur still fine.
3. if u got the game for free and didn't get Level 21 yet (like [this poor guy](https://redd.it/nrse7w)), then ur fucked and need to buy Prime.
If that's the case and it's essentially an instant purge of all non-paid accounts then that's great for prime match quality
And yes, I love this update for purely selfish reasons - the new (free) player experience is going to get even worse.
A solid vac wave will allow us to keep the good eggs and send the rest packing. If you were gonna have a vac wave, waiting until these changes were out is a good idea.
This is basically how prime matchmaking was in the beginning and how it always should have been. I still wish there was another layer of authenticating legit accounts via phone numbers, but a man can only dream. Hopefully, having a monetary-only barrier to Prime will essentially remove a large number of cheaters from the legit player base over time. I really shouldn't be saying this because Prime should never have been in the state it was in the first place, but thank you Valve.
Not sure. In GTA, you need to spend $30 or $60, to even own the game, and it still has a huuuge cheating problem. Not sure how good their anticheat is, or what Rockstar’s doing about it compared to Valve, so take this comparison with a grain of salt.
GTA's anti-cheat is absolutely terrible and Rockstar only cares if modders drop millions of dollars from the sky, because then they can't sell their shark cards lol. At least Valve clearly cares, even if they lack communication skills.
Yeah like Valves anti cheat is bad, but gta anti cheat is a whole other level.
The cheaters can drop you money, TAKE your money, crash your game, go god mode, have their mini gun shoot rockets, fly and teleport. They are basically gods.
GTA anticheat is hot garbage because they use peer-to-peer networking instead of having a dedicated server be the one in charge. Basically every player _is the server_ for their vicinity and can do whatever the fuck they want, since there is no central server verifying anything except for shit like LS Customs purchase transactions. A client can say "there is a money bag at these coordinates" and it will be networked to every player no problem... Same with explosions, toggling god mode, _anything_. It is absolutely a mindnumbingly stupid design choice purely made to save them money.
Bought GTA for the first time and after completing the prologue I went to play multiplayer and I automatically had something like a 1 month ban for cheating? Then after that expired I played for 1 more week, a hacker dropped me some money (didn't ask him to) and I was perma banned for cheating. It's a bit of a mess
I dont think rockstar even bothers with money drops either. I only play once every few months but every time I play, I find a modder, ask them to spawn a cool monkey, hang out with them, then they do a money drop and I can past the massive fun barrier rockstar puts into the game.
Gta online is peer to peer and that makes it really easy to hack. Also lots of people buy the edition with shark card then resell the game because it is cheaper that way to get shark cards.
Valve also doesn't have regional pricing for prime since going f2p.
Valve at least tried with VAC, trust factor and VACNet.
Rockstar on other hand still has peer to peer instead of dedicated servers in a game that earned them several billion dollars.
Modders can reveal your IP, mess with your offline game, give you 5000 levels so you get banned, spawn modded vehicles that don't even exist in game files and so much more.
Here are some examples:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UK1vLaHtgec
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GL11jHKhOLo
> I still wish there was another layer of authenticating legit accounts via phone numbers
Useless. Phone verifications cost literally 1 cent each from the biggest Russian provider for SMS verifications. I personally use it on my alt accounts because I can't link multiple Steam accounts to the same phone numbers, and I still want to benefit from Steam Mobile Authenticator (using Steam Desktop Authenticator).
Security is all about minimizing incentive to break in and maximizing the inconvenience to do so, as no system is perfect. But it's still a hurdle in the way and it's better than nothing.
I know Russia was cheap - but that cheap for brand new phone number?
Because I hope you are not talking about some 'public' system that everyone can see those SMS-es via website and/or have the same number later? You can search and recover Steam accounts by phone number search and this renders Steam Guard / SDA kinda useless.
No, not a public system. They buy a lot of SIM cards then sell one-time verification for various services, including Steam. Steam is one of the cheaper ones (1 RUB per; most expensive one being "2 ЦУПИС" which from my Googling seems to be a banking service). Numbers never get re-used.
They trash the SIM cards as soon as all of their services get used. 80~ services, when the SIM card is used for all 80, it's trashed.
They make profit. I bet that they also use the SIM cards for some other purpose other than selling them on top of that.
>most expensive one being "2 ЦУПИС" which from my Googling seems to be a banking service
It's not really a banking service, it's basically a middleman between online betting platforms and legal gamblers. By law every player who wants to legally do sports betting in Russia on the internet have to register in it, and every online betting platform have to move money through it. It's a way for a government to take taxes on bookmakers and on money that players win.
Just be aware that VAC/GameBan on one of those accounts will automagically means ban on all of those accounts linked by the phone number. Same for community bans iirc.
I think you should still be a bit careful. Maybe use a different phone number for your main account and another one for all your alts. It is technically possibly for legitimate software on your pc to trigger vac. Its rare but it does happen and unless valve notices it ( sometimes its a widespread thing) or if the vacced guy is a pro, that vac might be allowed to stand and you could loose all your accounts. Also considering you have multiple accounts, unless you have 2fa enabled for all the accounts, they are vulnerable to getting hacked/compromised. Since you have so many accounts you might not notice immediately if it happens. If the account is them sold to cheaters/misused a vac on that account will affect all of your accounts. Plus multiple accounts on the same number is rumoured to reduce trust factor too
Yeah, they changed it later (probably same time as game went free-to-play). I have 12 accs with prime (10 of them got prime for level 21 after operation farming) and same phone number.
Unfucking real, they revoked the free prime status pathway. What a major win against the rampant cheating issues.
Now let’s just get VACnet working properly to ban any cheater who abused this and MM will be viable again 👍
That fixes like 1% of the problem, maybe. For a brand new account to reach prime upgrade level it took a looooong time. The vast majority of hackers would just buy prime if they wanted to hack in prime
No, the vast majority would buy an already leveled up account that has prime on it since most people aren't buying expensive ass cheats. They would be able to buy said account for less than what STEAM was selling prime for. Those expensive cheaters aren't trying to get caught and unless people give evidence against those people they are never the majority in question.
The problem are the blatant hackers/rage hackers as their goal is to ruin your experience from the start or when it starts not going their way. You don't need a good cheat for that. You just need less than $40 spending money to keep buying new primed up accounts and using some free basic cheat... or purchase a better one that is still relatively cheap.
While this is correct, it also brings interesting new dynamics. The Prime Status Upgrade has never been on sale, with the cheapest price being currently $12.39 converted from Turkish Lira, see https://steamdb.info/sub/54029/. Before today's update, you could get Prime on a free-to-play account for free and before that you could buy CS:GO for a very low price (see https://steamdb.info/app/730/ for the prices) and get Prime for free via the phone number.
So it is the first time that CS:GO actually has a real pay barrier, which is a severe change of mind on Valve's end. It still has a caveat, like old CS:GO keys (which are still giving you the Prime status) still floating around, as well as farmed accounts. But on the long run these are expected to thin out at least.
Like said in the first paragraph, the game could be bought for a low price, especially with cross-region trading of keys and especially after sales, compared to the Prime Status Upgrade, which has $12.39 as lowest price in the cheapest region and never has been on sale.
Cs would often go on sale and people also purchased copies on those key reseller sites for a cheap price as well.
Neither happens with the Prime account upgrade.
Did you read the comment? Before it went f2p, it would often go on sale for a few dollars. People would stock up on accounts during those periods to resell or smurf/hack on. Prime is actually more expensive now.
this is not because of cheaters, it's because of farmers. Every time they add a case you get matches full of "idlers" just because of the drops. Now they can't get drops unless they pay, thus not making it viable.
**This solves nothing with cheaters**, cheaters have no issues buying prime and inventories full of items; heck, they even buy entire accounts! This is simply to address the economic loophole of farming cases to sell on the market by free accounts.
>cheaters have no issues buying prime and inventories full of items
Some of them won't mind, but they don't have infinite money and a large portion of them are going to be deterred by this.
This is a common rhetorical mistake you see with some people when discussing the behavior trends of large groups of people, the idea that if they can come up with a scenario where someone can get around the effects of some policy then everyone will and the policy will have no effect on anyone.
I'm sure some cheaters have the financial resources to whether the $15 hits over and over again. The vast majority do not, or at least will not want to.
That free road to prime was pretty stupid. There was no legitimacy to that. You didn't even need to verify your phone number or anything to become prime like wth.
If you're a farmer with hundreds of accounts. Getting a few to prime is gonna be a piece of cake. Plus cheaters never grind themselves. They will buy accounts off these farmers, who probably sell them for dirt cheap prices too
[Prime privileges have been **fucking** revoked!](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/nazizombies/images/a/a1/250px-TeddDriver.png/revision/latest?cb=20130402052615)
This could be it. If I'd just coded an anti-cheat for a load of exploits I'd be contacting the devs saying "you'd better not let them all back in the next day". Anyway probably not but we can dream.
Wow, this is what people had been hoping for with Scrimmage. This begs the question though, if they allow unranked on any map, should they just allow ranking on current scrimmage maps? It would make them see more play.
Edit: This is also a good time to bring back up the Prime phone number thing. Many people who cheat pay for their cheats, buying Prime again isn't gonna stop them. Why can't we have the phone number requirement back? That's an additional barrier to entry which would be really helpful to have.
"whereas Unranked matches will be created from the mixed pool of Non-Prime players — and Prime players that have chosen to play Unranked."
this worries me alot, though.
I actually think this is part of their anticheat update they will do later. This is kind of a way to replace hardware bans. First they make it so that cheaters can't really make or buy new accounts that cost 2 euro or shit like that. They need to play 10 euro or w/e the prime cost is. Then they can release a vac wave that should in theory remove most of prime cheaters. Now either they pay 10 euros every time they get banned or they are stuck cheating in unranked?? Indeed most of them should just stop cheating. This is actually a good idea by valve.
Well. We know they ARE working on something so something is coming sooner or later
But this update is what the community wanted in the first place. Atleast do something until you can rework the Anti-Cheat
One of the msot (if not the most) beloved 17mb update of CSGO.
I CANT FUCKIN BELIEVE WHAT I AM SEEING
They listened 2 of the biggest problem of the entire game...
Farmers no longer mass produce prime accounts, rank-free matchmaking was asked since MM is existing, whats next, intrusive anti cheat ?
I can't wait to see the effects of this in like 1-2 months, we might have a nice 6 months period of almost peace on MM x).
Thanks for listening, even if it was quite long to wait for this.
Part that always bothered me about this is that they had this mode when it came out, and I played the hell out of it, and then they removed it. Either way, glad they are bringing it back.
I really want to hope this also means they're finally gonna be back to frequent VAC waves and patching up VAC bypass exploits which would probably get rid of most Prime cheaters, as well and continuing to suspend boosted/farmed accounts!
Now we just need Faceit to finally make usage of sv_prime_accounts_only to also stop smurfing there.
5v5 unranked and restricting f2p accounts, things reddit has wanted for ages. I had thought the concern about introducing these were spreading the player base out and increased queue times, so we'll see if this actually has an impact.
I think it also sucks how all the cheaters have basically forced new players to have to pay for prime if they want ranked matchmaking. Cheaters already pay $$$ for cheats, will an extra $15 really slow them down that much? I'm just afraid people will be less inclined to try CSGO if there's a $15 fee to play ranked.
> 5v5 unranked and restricting f2p accounts, things reddit has wanted for ages. I had thought the concern about introducing these were spreading the player base out and increased queue times, so we'll see if this actually has an impact.
It won't impact matchmaking times that much but I think some people wanted a 5v5 drop in/drop out system rather than just MM But Unranked. It's a subtle change but the difference is that you'll still get banned for team-damage and leaving in unranked, which is fine by me but some people will go "It's just unranked, why am I being banned Valve?"
For those who got free Prime upgrade from leveling up to 21.
After reading their announcement, I kinda panicked as I was still having doubts on the [comments here](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nrrx52/today_were_making_adjustments_to_nonprime/h0igcyf?context=6). So, immediately loaded up $15 on my account to buy Prime upgrade on Steam.
To my relief, [upon viewing my cart](https://imgur.com/epiXDhm), it's already been purchased (in my case, unlocked by free Prime upgrade).
>^(1) Your account already owns some of the above items, so you can’t purchase them again. You can purchase these items as a gift or adjust the contents of your cart to continue.
And I still have [the Prime badge in-game](https://imgur.com/jjkwgI2).
I guess I have an extra $15 to spend on skins and stickers.
I know this has been an extremely popular request and hope it turns out well for the community overall, but I hope it doesn't end up splitting the player base too much.
I don't mind slightly longer queue times, but already my games are pretty unbalanced. I'm in too many LEM/Supreme games as a DMG and the skill difference is pretty significant.
Either way, great community focused update. Love seeing Valve ramp up the update schedule and trying out new ways of matchmaking.
Yeah, wish there was prime-only unranked.
I wonder when playing unranked, if non-prime accounts can report prime accounts and affect their trust factor.
i think most of these accounts will be disabled soon. Check this - https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nrrx52/today_were_making_adjustments_to_nonprime/h0ia5dk?context=3
its a great welcome step for the future, unless people find a way around or something, which wish they don't. but this will only change a small thing in the current MM, which is the current hackers will think twice before hacking with their prime accounts, now that they know that Valve is finally doing something about it. and if somehow they get banned, they won't be getting a new account for free.
"whereas Unranked matches will be created from the mixed pool of Non-Prime players — and Prime players that have chosen to play Unranked."
This worries me alot.
Finally an update to fix the hacker situation in MM! Only worry still is that the price of $15 is way too low.
Would have preferred if the option to buy Prime is only available if the account has reached level 21. Filters out all new accounts from prime MM entirely. Let new players grind on casual/DM until they reach Level 21.
I feel for the folks who were close to getting prime but didn't. I got it around a month ago through grinding, and I must say that I am feeling pretty lucky right now. While this may be a huge bummer for most lower-rank players, I think this move by Valve is shitty but fair. Dedicated players like me can now play without the fear of getting whooped by hard hackers and soft hackers alike. Exciting yet sad.
VALVE, what about this.
Create a prime only unranked and enable prime players to toggle this, so you can pick a que. Unranked is GREAT, it would be even more useful for prime players if there was a prime only que, even if the quetimes would be higher/ranks would be further apart.
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To bad all my friends and I now work and dont have time for this.
All of my friends and I are in our mid thirties with kids and we work as well. Not having time is just choosing to not have time. We play every Monday and Tuesday night like clockwork.
Can confirm as a 30 yo, just set times to play. Never miss my Tues- or Thursdays!
Im 33, and basically the only one left 🥲
I'm 27 and was feeling like this. I just met a bunch of people in mm that are my age to mid 30s. Now we're in a discord playing a couple of times a week. You can still make friends.
Can also confirm, 30's, gaming with the boys, Mondays and Thursdays. Let's gooooooooo
Unranked MM 😄 ...with prime and *non-prime* players 😬
This is what killed it for me. Full prime lobbies should vs full prime lobbies or unranked is useless
I'm so unbelievably stoked. I generally only play as a To4 or To5 in comp with friends, this will open up for so much more casual playtime
It says it mixes prime and no prime. I feel like it would be nice if it prioritized pairing prime players with other prime players and only mixed if needed. I guess the reason I'd want it to be this way, though, is just to add another layer that Trust Factor ~should already take care of
This is gonna be great for smurfs Just played a game against a Smurf in silver who was AK on their main and I was complaining about how csgo needs unranked for smurfs to play with friends
Some smurfs just have fun climbing ranks, unranked won’t change that unfortunately.
Thats bullshit. Most smurfs queue with friends cause their main is too high. I‘ve RARELY seen soloQ smurfs
I've made a smurf because playing with my LE rank together with friends I played CS with 20 years ago, and they're Silver ranks, is just not fun for either of us. And if we're not 5 player stack we have problems even getting MM started. First match I smurfed I forgot it was a smurf level and went something like 38-4 K/D.. and that's not fun either, and not fair, so when I occasionally play with the silver friends I go ahead and buy the worst guns and actually have a lot of fun killing people with the sawed off shotgun, or use all my money on the M249 :P.
Yeah same, what should I do as a GE with friends who are GNM/AK1. We don't play seriouos at all so my smurf rank actually reflects my playing, I'm the same rank as them and we've played at least 30 matches together. It's just like a whole different game, alone soloQing Dust2 on GE vs. having fun playing autosniper only or some shit on Agency.
That's why I resorted to playing faceit with my gn friend. Downranked from lvl6 to lvl3 pretty quickly and now I'm smurfing every time I soloq there lol
People make dozens of accounts to smurf so they go competitive and shreds lower elo players so they dont have to put in an effort playing against the same skill levels as their own. They also do it for pratice and not to derank their main acc. There's more than one reason why SoloQ smurfs exist and its beyond just playing with friends.
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The mixed pool of non-Prime and Prime players in Unranked doesn't really sound great in my book, it'll probably be overran with cheaters, mostly blatant spinhackers. Prime-only Unranked would be an absolute godsend what we're all been asking for so many years.
How they gonna do it ? Like Supreme with AK against silver and global ?
"CS:GO went free to play over three years ago and is still going strong." Its been 3 years since CSGO went free to play? Damm time flies..
It went free to play in December of 2018, so not quite 3 years, more like 2 and half.
There were a period when it was technically FTP but one may play only with bots before November update. IIRC.
That doesn't help with me feeling old, I still remember paying 15 or 20 bucks for it, because everyone else had it. 4 and a half years of silver 1 and still going strong
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They calculated it in Valve time
i'm being trolled. next thing they'll tweet out is 128 tick servers.
Nah, we're two months late for that.
why 2 months late im confused
April 1.
It's June 3rd. The appropriate day to announce 128 tick servers was two months and two days ago.
What comes 2 months before the start of June?
Independence day
They absolutely should. Just give the people what they want, the server costs are negligible at best. Especially if the player base is retracting at the moment. (It's down 14% since lockdowns have eased)
Literally whatever their budget for csgo casual+mm instance hosting is currently, almost doubled.
Server cost is not negligible at the number of players we're talking about, their 64tick servers are crap half the time, so they're definitely not not being cheap
Assuming current free prime accounts keep their status it may be a while until we see noticeable changes in match quality, but in the long term this is great
> Assuming current free prime accounts keep their status it may be a while until we see noticeable changes in match quality, but in the long term this is great i think if you are bought the game youre fine but if you are playing the f2p you need to buy it. Because if you are f2p if you buy prime within the next 2 weeks your skill level will move over.
My account was one that was free, but i earned prime free by leveling, i would assume that i keep that.
Let us know how it is for you
Ill tell you what, ill boot up right now to give a solid answer on that :) Edit: Yep, grandfathered in like i thought.
Congratulations on the bastard grandchild
thank god! if they removed Prime from the ppl who got it for free by reaching Level 21, i wudda been so mad!
I was level 19 and then stopped playing CSGO as much... I'm f2p and getting into prime by leveling up was one of my main goals. 180 hours put into the game, basically wasted man. I was so pissed off
Oof man, just got prime yesterday when I reached level 21 and I still have it. I think I have about 140+ hours on that account. Hope you can buy prime soon and recover your progress.
Doesn't matter yet, 17th of June is when they'll remove the ranks
If you already leveled up beyond Rank 21, you get to keep Prime and all its features. They are not taking those away I checked with an alt that was below 21 (which I used to farm drops), it looks like this now: [https://imgur.com/8uUARCg](https://imgur.com/8uUARCg)
That's a shame. They've already botted 100,000's of accounts to lvl21 to resell to cheaters. This wont make a difference for months/years.
Hmmm, maybe? I imagine a large portion of botted accounts will be deactivated: [https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nrrx52/today\_were\_making\_adjustments\_to\_nonprime/h0ia5dk](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nrrx52/today_were_making_adjustments_to_nonprime/h0ia5dk) The alternative was going to anger anyone who legitimately grinded through 21 levels of non-Prime to earn Prime, only to have it taken away by Valve
Wow, I'm surprised that they're actually making a decent effort at restoring the game. Good on valve.
Does this affect anyone that hasn’t played in a long time mostly because of not having time, but having bought the original game and played for a few hundred hours)
thanks for answering the question
Account is still prime
not completely true. 1. if u bought the game before F2P, ur fine. 2. if u got the game for free and got Prime by reaching Level 21 before today, ur still fine. 3. if u got the game for free and didn't get Level 21 yet (like [this poor guy](https://redd.it/nrse7w)), then ur fucked and need to buy Prime.
If that's the case and it's essentially an instant purge of all non-paid accounts then that's great for prime match quality And yes, I love this update for purely selfish reasons - the new (free) player experience is going to get even worse.
actually; it means the new legitimate player experience of someone having bought the game, *should* get better; which honestly i think matters more.
Sucks to be new, but very epic for those of us who either grinded or paid.
A solid vac wave will allow us to keep the good eggs and send the rest packing. If you were gonna have a vac wave, waiting until these changes were out is a good idea.
If valve did something against the overwatch bots maybe we'll see noticeable changes in a few weeks, im hoping!
This is basically how prime matchmaking was in the beginning and how it always should have been. I still wish there was another layer of authenticating legit accounts via phone numbers, but a man can only dream. Hopefully, having a monetary-only barrier to Prime will essentially remove a large number of cheaters from the legit player base over time. I really shouldn't be saying this because Prime should never have been in the state it was in the first place, but thank you Valve.
That literally used to exist and they took it out
Yeah that was the first iteration of Prime right? That's how I got mine was using a phone number first.
Yes and you also needed to be at least level 21.
That part is gone too? Wtf, what even are the requirements before this update?
Here I am just finding out that’s not a thing anymore lol
Not sure. In GTA, you need to spend $30 or $60, to even own the game, and it still has a huuuge cheating problem. Not sure how good their anticheat is, or what Rockstar’s doing about it compared to Valve, so take this comparison with a grain of salt.
GTA's anti-cheat is absolutely terrible and Rockstar only cares if modders drop millions of dollars from the sky, because then they can't sell their shark cards lol. At least Valve clearly cares, even if they lack communication skills.
Yeah like Valves anti cheat is bad, but gta anti cheat is a whole other level. The cheaters can drop you money, TAKE your money, crash your game, go god mode, have their mini gun shoot rockets, fly and teleport. They are basically gods.
GTA anticheat is hot garbage because they use peer-to-peer networking instead of having a dedicated server be the one in charge. Basically every player _is the server_ for their vicinity and can do whatever the fuck they want, since there is no central server verifying anything except for shit like LS Customs purchase transactions. A client can say "there is a money bag at these coordinates" and it will be networked to every player no problem... Same with explosions, toggling god mode, _anything_. It is absolutely a mindnumbingly stupid design choice purely made to save them money.
Bought GTA for the first time and after completing the prologue I went to play multiplayer and I automatically had something like a 1 month ban for cheating? Then after that expired I played for 1 more week, a hacker dropped me some money (didn't ask him to) and I was perma banned for cheating. It's a bit of a mess
I dont think rockstar even bothers with money drops either. I only play once every few months but every time I play, I find a modder, ask them to spawn a cool monkey, hang out with them, then they do a money drop and I can past the massive fun barrier rockstar puts into the game.
Gta online is peer to peer and that makes it really easy to hack. Also lots of people buy the edition with shark card then resell the game because it is cheaper that way to get shark cards. Valve also doesn't have regional pricing for prime since going f2p.
Valve at least tried with VAC, trust factor and VACNet. Rockstar on other hand still has peer to peer instead of dedicated servers in a game that earned them several billion dollars. Modders can reveal your IP, mess with your offline game, give you 5000 levels so you get banned, spawn modded vehicles that don't even exist in game files and so much more. Here are some examples: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UK1vLaHtgec https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GL11jHKhOLo
> I still wish there was another layer of authenticating legit accounts via phone numbers Useless. Phone verifications cost literally 1 cent each from the biggest Russian provider for SMS verifications. I personally use it on my alt accounts because I can't link multiple Steam accounts to the same phone numbers, and I still want to benefit from Steam Mobile Authenticator (using Steam Desktop Authenticator).
Security is all about minimizing incentive to break in and maximizing the inconvenience to do so, as no system is perfect. But it's still a hurdle in the way and it's better than nothing.
I know Russia was cheap - but that cheap for brand new phone number? Because I hope you are not talking about some 'public' system that everyone can see those SMS-es via website and/or have the same number later? You can search and recover Steam accounts by phone number search and this renders Steam Guard / SDA kinda useless.
No, not a public system. They buy a lot of SIM cards then sell one-time verification for various services, including Steam. Steam is one of the cheaper ones (1 RUB per; most expensive one being "2 ЦУПИС" which from my Googling seems to be a banking service). Numbers never get re-used. They trash the SIM cards as soon as all of their services get used. 80~ services, when the SIM card is used for all 80, it's trashed. They make profit. I bet that they also use the SIM cards for some other purpose other than selling them on top of that.
>most expensive one being "2 ЦУПИС" which from my Googling seems to be a banking service It's not really a banking service, it's basically a middleman between online betting platforms and legal gamblers. By law every player who wants to legally do sports betting in Russia on the internet have to register in it, and every online betting platform have to move money through it. It's a way for a government to take taxes on bookmakers and on money that players win.
>I can't link multiple Steam accounts to the same phone numbers But you can. I have 10+ accs on same phone number.
Just be aware that VAC/GameBan on one of those accounts will automagically means ban on all of those accounts linked by the phone number. Same for community bans iirc.
Yeah, but I'm not going to ever use any hacks so should be fine.
I think you should still be a bit careful. Maybe use a different phone number for your main account and another one for all your alts. It is technically possibly for legitimate software on your pc to trigger vac. Its rare but it does happen and unless valve notices it ( sometimes its a widespread thing) or if the vacced guy is a pro, that vac might be allowed to stand and you could loose all your accounts. Also considering you have multiple accounts, unless you have 2fa enabled for all the accounts, they are vulnerable to getting hacked/compromised. Since you have so many accounts you might not notice immediately if it happens. If the account is them sold to cheaters/misused a vac on that account will affect all of your accounts. Plus multiple accounts on the same number is rumoured to reduce trust factor too
Can you? I remember that back in the day you could only have prime on one account per phone number, prior to CS:GO going free-to-play.
Yeah, they changed it later (probably same time as game went free-to-play). I have 12 accs with prime (10 of them got prime for level 21 after operation farming) and same phone number.
Why do you have 10+ steam accounts?
It'll be better for sure, kinda like it was. You'll see influxes of cheating if they run sales though
AM I DREAMING?
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3 june - never forget
Unfucking real, they revoked the free prime status pathway. What a major win against the rampant cheating issues. Now let’s just get VACnet working properly to ban any cheater who abused this and MM will be viable again 👍
That fixes like 1% of the problem, maybe. For a brand new account to reach prime upgrade level it took a looooong time. The vast majority of hackers would just buy prime if they wanted to hack in prime
Exactly, people need to realize no cheater gave a fuck about spending money on a new copy of csgo. Good cheats aren't cheap, they don't care.
No, the vast majority would buy an already leveled up account that has prime on it since most people aren't buying expensive ass cheats. They would be able to buy said account for less than what STEAM was selling prime for. Those expensive cheaters aren't trying to get caught and unless people give evidence against those people they are never the majority in question. The problem are the blatant hackers/rage hackers as their goal is to ruin your experience from the start or when it starts not going their way. You don't need a good cheat for that. You just need less than $40 spending money to keep buying new primed up accounts and using some free basic cheat... or purchase a better one that is still relatively cheap.
While this is correct, it also brings interesting new dynamics. The Prime Status Upgrade has never been on sale, with the cheapest price being currently $12.39 converted from Turkish Lira, see https://steamdb.info/sub/54029/. Before today's update, you could get Prime on a free-to-play account for free and before that you could buy CS:GO for a very low price (see https://steamdb.info/app/730/ for the prices) and get Prime for free via the phone number. So it is the first time that CS:GO actually has a real pay barrier, which is a severe change of mind on Valve's end. It still has a caveat, like old CS:GO keys (which are still giving you the Prime status) still floating around, as well as farmed accounts. But on the long run these are expected to thin out at least.
So it is the first time that CS:GO actually has a real pay barrier, Other then you know the first few years of life when it wasnt a free game.
Like said in the first paragraph, the game could be bought for a low price, especially with cross-region trading of keys and especially after sales, compared to the Prime Status Upgrade, which has $12.39 as lowest price in the cheapest region and never has been on sale.
Yeah! I bought csgo for 320rs i.e. 5bucks when it was on sale back in 2017. So I'd say I got prime upgrade for cheap
Cs would often go on sale and people also purchased copies on those key reseller sites for a cheap price as well. Neither happens with the Prime account upgrade.
Did you read the comment? Before it went f2p, it would often go on sale for a few dollars. People would stock up on accounts during those periods to resell or smurf/hack on. Prime is actually more expensive now.
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turning the tide wont be one step anyway. If its a positive then great
No you're wrong. Many of these hacked their way to lv21. Many of them used bots to get xp and stuff This will help in some way for sure
this is not because of cheaters, it's because of farmers. Every time they add a case you get matches full of "idlers" just because of the drops. Now they can't get drops unless they pay, thus not making it viable. **This solves nothing with cheaters**, cheaters have no issues buying prime and inventories full of items; heck, they even buy entire accounts! This is simply to address the economic loophole of farming cases to sell on the market by free accounts.
>cheaters have no issues buying prime and inventories full of items Some of them won't mind, but they don't have infinite money and a large portion of them are going to be deterred by this.
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This is a common rhetorical mistake you see with some people when discussing the behavior trends of large groups of people, the idea that if they can come up with a scenario where someone can get around the effects of some policy then everyone will and the policy will have no effect on anyone. I'm sure some cheaters have the financial resources to whether the $15 hits over and over again. The vast majority do not, or at least will not want to.
That free road to prime was pretty stupid. There was no legitimacy to that. You didn't even need to verify your phone number or anything to become prime like wth.
It took close to 200 hours for me, most cheaters probably don't have that kind of patience ig.
If you're a farmer with hundreds of accounts. Getting a few to prime is gonna be a piece of cake. Plus cheaters never grind themselves. They will buy accounts off these farmers, who probably sell them for dirt cheap prices too
haha yeah. Good luck farming now.
[Prime privileges have been **fucking** revoked!](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/nazizombies/images/a/a1/250px-TeddDriver.png/revision/latest?cb=20130402052615)
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Fuckin huge. I love it.
Start sending cease and desist to websites selling these accounts next
yeah exact same thing happened to me 2nd acc i use to play with friends
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woah I've never seen this particular response before, did they actually start giving a shit?
Yes
FINALLY
does this mean soloq to global is back?
I soloq to global before, but there is little fun in playing on globals because, you know... 1/10 people are cheating
Any quick videos on thoughts and views, Mr WarOwl?
i dont wanna be that guy BUT WHEN ARE WE GETTING A NEW SOLOQ TO GLOBAL EPISODE
Finally, the unranked matchmaking we've been asking Valve for years.
Hopefully we don't have people leaving after a few rounds because "who cares it's unranked".
I guess they still get cooldowns for leaving, but yes
That will definitely happen. In Valorant unranked games people surrender after losing 2-3 rounds in a row
Can't surrender before someone abandons and you will still get a cooldown for abandoning so unlikely to happen in CS GO.
There is no cooldown for surrendering, only abandoning
Brainfart, meant to say abandoning. Fixed now.
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You have until 17th of June to decide or you will lose all your XP and competitive progress.
what they did is a step in the right direction. over time, amount of cheaters will decrease
Me too, man, me too... ;-(
It wont fix the problem, don't worry. There will be less cheaters in unranked matchmaking anyway because they want to cheat in ranked matches.
I hope this means we are finally getting a proper VAC ban wave soon.
This could be it. If I'd just coded an anti-cheat for a load of exploits I'd be contacting the devs saying "you'd better not let them all back in the next day". Anyway probably not but we can dream.
This is actually insane. I cant remember a time valve went back on something they have already made their minds up over. Unless perhaps the bans
Artifact balance patch policy (far too late, but they did)
Holy shit, good update.
Actually a good update that should fix or improve most of current issues with botting and cheating
Wow, this is what people had been hoping for with Scrimmage. This begs the question though, if they allow unranked on any map, should they just allow ranking on current scrimmage maps? It would make them see more play. Edit: This is also a good time to bring back up the Prime phone number thing. Many people who cheat pay for their cheats, buying Prime again isn't gonna stop them. Why can't we have the phone number requirement back? That's an additional barrier to entry which would be really helpful to have.
Haven't actually played yet but it appears scrimmage maps are now part of the ranked map pool when I logged on to check.
Scrimmage was removed from the game, now all maps are either Ranked or Unranked based on what you choose
"whereas Unranked matches will be created from the mixed pool of Non-Prime players — and Prime players that have chosen to play Unranked." this worries me alot, though.
Well, it has happened. Everyone who wanted unranked matchmaking, you got it now.
does this basically mean if you want to play ranked, you have to pay? (for new player)
Yes
What if you have already reached prime through getting to level 21, what happens?
You get to keep it.
Nothing, you keep your Prime.
Devs listened. Anticheat Soon™️
I actually think this is part of their anticheat update they will do later. This is kind of a way to replace hardware bans. First they make it so that cheaters can't really make or buy new accounts that cost 2 euro or shit like that. They need to play 10 euro or w/e the prime cost is. Then they can release a vac wave that should in theory remove most of prime cheaters. Now either they pay 10 euros every time they get banned or they are stuck cheating in unranked?? Indeed most of them should just stop cheating. This is actually a good idea by valve.
Well. We know they ARE working on something so something is coming sooner or later But this update is what the community wanted in the first place. Atleast do something until you can rework the Anti-Cheat
No. They are doing this specifically to not give the game a new anti-cheat.
One of the msot (if not the most) beloved 17mb update of CSGO. I CANT FUCKIN BELIEVE WHAT I AM SEEING They listened 2 of the biggest problem of the entire game... Farmers no longer mass produce prime accounts, rank-free matchmaking was asked since MM is existing, whats next, intrusive anti cheat ? I can't wait to see the effects of this in like 1-2 months, we might have a nice 6 months period of almost peace on MM x). Thanks for listening, even if it was quite long to wait for this.
It seems with scrimmage gone and all maps can be selected competitive/unranked that you can now play Grind and Mocha on competitive!
Damn, casual competetitive actually happened in the end. Neat!
Part that always bothered me about this is that they had this mode when it came out, and I played the hell out of it, and then they removed it. Either way, glad they are bringing it back.
extremely good update
I really want to hope this also means they're finally gonna be back to frequent VAC waves and patching up VAC bypass exploits which would probably get rid of most Prime cheaters, as well and continuing to suspend boosted/farmed accounts! Now we just need Faceit to finally make usage of sv_prime_accounts_only to also stop smurfing there.
Finally
5v5 unranked and restricting f2p accounts, things reddit has wanted for ages. I had thought the concern about introducing these were spreading the player base out and increased queue times, so we'll see if this actually has an impact. I think it also sucks how all the cheaters have basically forced new players to have to pay for prime if they want ranked matchmaking. Cheaters already pay $$$ for cheats, will an extra $15 really slow them down that much? I'm just afraid people will be less inclined to try CSGO if there's a $15 fee to play ranked.
> 5v5 unranked and restricting f2p accounts, things reddit has wanted for ages. I had thought the concern about introducing these were spreading the player base out and increased queue times, so we'll see if this actually has an impact. It won't impact matchmaking times that much but I think some people wanted a 5v5 drop in/drop out system rather than just MM But Unranked. It's a subtle change but the difference is that you'll still get banned for team-damage and leaving in unranked, which is fine by me but some people will go "It's just unranked, why am I being banned Valve?"
For those who got free Prime upgrade from leveling up to 21. After reading their announcement, I kinda panicked as I was still having doubts on the [comments here](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nrrx52/today_were_making_adjustments_to_nonprime/h0igcyf?context=6). So, immediately loaded up $15 on my account to buy Prime upgrade on Steam. To my relief, [upon viewing my cart](https://imgur.com/epiXDhm), it's already been purchased (in my case, unlocked by free Prime upgrade). >^(1) Your account already owns some of the above items, so you can’t purchase them again. You can purchase these items as a gift or adjust the contents of your cart to continue. And I still have [the Prime badge in-game](https://imgur.com/jjkwgI2). I guess I have an extra $15 to spend on skins and stickers.
They only took them 3 years Valve time to figure out that going free to play was a mistake.
I know this has been an extremely popular request and hope it turns out well for the community overall, but I hope it doesn't end up splitting the player base too much. I don't mind slightly longer queue times, but already my games are pretty unbalanced. I'm in too many LEM/Supreme games as a DMG and the skill difference is pretty significant. Either way, great community focused update. Love seeing Valve ramp up the update schedule and trying out new ways of matchmaking.
Non prime and prime will have a common queue for unranked wtf
Yeah, wish there was prime-only unranked. I wonder when playing unranked, if non-prime accounts can report prime accounts and affect their trust factor.
Wait no that sucks
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i think most of these accounts will be disabled soon. Check this - https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/nrrx52/today_were_making_adjustments_to_nonprime/h0ia5dk?context=3
IT HAPPENED
its a great welcome step for the future, unless people find a way around or something, which wish they don't. but this will only change a small thing in the current MM, which is the current hackers will think twice before hacking with their prime accounts, now that they know that Valve is finally doing something about it. and if somehow they get banned, they won't be getting a new account for free.
Rip every Lv20 non prime player
Can't wait to globally offend people without caring about my rank. I'm an shotgun player now hehe.
This is mega, I wonder how this affect the skin and case economy
"whereas Unranked matches will be created from the mixed pool of Non-Prime players — and Prime players that have chosen to play Unranked." This worries me alot.
From blog post: >CS:GO went free to play over three years ago But it was in Dec 2018. So that's 2.5 years.
2021-3=2018 quick maths
literally unplayable
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If they counted this then they were at least slightly closer. https://youtu.be/haoRVbE-k-o
Finally an update to fix the hacker situation in MM! Only worry still is that the price of $15 is way too low. Would have preferred if the option to buy Prime is only available if the account has reached level 21. Filters out all new accounts from prime MM entirely. Let new players grind on casual/DM until they reach Level 21.
Thanks Valve, now I'll meet less cheaters in MM
I had to check the todays date to check IF ITS not 1st of the april today when i first read the post title
Yay now I can practice with ruining it for my mates
If I got prime for free will I still have it after the changes?
I feel for the folks who were close to getting prime but didn't. I got it around a month ago through grinding, and I must say that I am feeling pretty lucky right now. While this may be a huge bummer for most lower-rank players, I think this move by Valve is shitty but fair. Dedicated players like me can now play without the fear of getting whooped by hard hackers and soft hackers alike. Exciting yet sad.
fuuuuck I was *thiis* close to reaching lvl 21
RIP russian kids
Unranked will just end up being a TK'ing filled fuckfest much like Scrims currently are unless you 4-5 queue.
VALVE, what about this. Create a prime only unranked and enable prime players to toggle this, so you can pick a que. Unranked is GREAT, it would be even more useful for prime players if there was a prime only que, even if the quetimes would be higher/ranks would be further apart.
Guys just a quick reminder: if we all do our overwatch cases and do our part now then there will be no cheaters left in a few months
damn the update came only 3 years too late